Getting irritated while traveling
13 Jul 2021, 2:18 am
Last year, before the COVID pandemic blew up, I went on a trip to India and Sri Lanka for 3 weeks with a group of other people (and who was there would change over time). I was very enthusiastic at first (as I always am whenever I go into something new and interesting), but over time, I became a bit tired of the causing moving around the trip required. We frequently went from city to city, hotel to hotel, and took multiple plane flights across India. Toward the end, I noticed I was getting more and more irritable. Little things started annoying me more, and I became less interested in trying new foods, and focused only on familiar foods. Sometimes, I acted inappropriately. Like, on one flight, the person in front of me decided to recline their seat. As I'm fairly tall with long legs, and thus my legroom is already cramped, I got pretty irritated and started kicking the seat. I had wanted to rest my head on my tray table, which I couldn't do now. I eventually just rested my head on the seat in front of me, but I knew that at any time the person in front of me could shift their seat back up.
My main companion, whom I accompanied the entire trip, got more and more irritating over time. She would often ramble on and on about stuff, and was very very absent-minded, paying very little attention to what was going on around her. To get to our final flight home in New Delhi airport, I essentially led her around, walking quickly as she struggled to keep up. But I was just annoyed and wanted to get us to our terminal. As our flight back home was delayed, the airline paid for us to eat in an airport restaurant and I gulped down the food, but she was completely uninterested in eating it.
Still, there were parts of the later part of the trip that I enjoyed, like visiting mountain caves and a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, and probably my favorite was the Sigiriya fortress ruins, which was quite a climb to the top. However, I was tired later that day (as we climbed the fortress in the very early morning), and when we were to visit some ruins, I just wanted time to myself to relax, and declined to go.
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"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
13 Jul 2021, 4:52 pm
That all sounds pretty normal to me. Those plane seats are so close together that reclining the seat often does upset the person behind. They even sell little sticks designed to limit how far back they can lean the seat in front of you, though using one might get you into trouble with the staff if they see it. I spent one flight pushing back every time the guy in front tried to recline his seat, which partially worked, but you have to be poised ready to do it again if he tries again later, so it's not a great solution.
And I can see how the girl would try anybody's patience. Travelling isn't always free of hassle, that's for sure. Could it be also that you were simply tired at times? Irritating things can feel a lot worse if you're underslept.
