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More Australians over 50 have been embracing the “golden gap year”, reclaiming travel and independence later in life. Two such women share with Explore why it is never too late to chase adventure.

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Travel
Transcript
00:00It's that time in your life where your kids have left home or you're more freed up, you're 55 plus
00:06and it's your time, you can go off and do travel and an intrepid travel survey recently said that
00:13something like 85% of people over 55 didn't do the gap year and are desperate and regret it and
00:20now they're thinking, here I'm not going to miss out on that but now they call it the golden gap
00:24year. Something that's adventurous and makes them sort of like reclaim their own identity.
00:30I had my daughter and everything shifts and it just becomes about being present for the family
00:37and of course combining that with trying to build a career, travel, it just went out the window.
00:45I did my first trip to Morocco only about 15 months ago, 16 months ago and I just haven't
00:51stopped since and if I haven't got a trip planned then I just start to feel anxious. I feel like
00:58I'm just reclaiming the freedom that I feel like maybe I handed over to familiar responsibilities
01:04for a long, long time and once you get that taste, it's hard to go back.
01:10Hello!
01:12I recently went to Cambodia and I went to a place called Shintamani Wild where I was able
01:17to go on an anti-poaching patrol and I'm literally behind a guy on a motorbike with a big gun
01:24riding
01:24pillion thinking my god it's like I'm in my 20s like I honestly and I'm doing something that's
01:29actually good. Initially there was that element of should I be doing this but once I you know got on
01:35those bikes over in Morocco I absolutely should be doing it. I've worked long and hard for the right
01:41to be able to do it.
01:42It's land that I try to plan some plan that is illegal here.
01:48When you're on your own you make every decision you have this like white canvas and you can decide
01:54what you want to do, you can decide you don't want to go out to that, you can be adventurous,
01:58you haven't got someone orchestrating what you're doing and so it does help you reclaim who you are.
02:04In my 30s everything was about really pushing myself and and hunting out adrenaline and now
02:11in my 50s I still want adventure but it's just at a different pace. I don't really have a list
02:17of
02:17things I want to tick off, I just want to immerse myself deeply in whatever culture it is. You might
02:21see less but I feel like you experience more by traveling a bit slower.
02:31My grandparents they got so excited by all the letters I used to write that they actually decided
02:36to backpack through Asia and then ended up in Mallorca and lived in Malta and granddad painted
02:44and my grandmother wrote stories and they were in their 70s when they did that. It keeps you active,
02:51it keeps you younger, it keeps you agile, it's never too late to travel.
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