Did you know that there is a ‘Carpe Diem Day’ on February 26? The first known use of the phrase ‘carpe diem’ was way back in Roman times, when the poet Horace used it, in Odes 23. For him, it was not about ‘seizing the day’ but ‘plucking the day’. Either way, it meant living life to the full, just as thousands of gap year travellers do each year.
Many of those travellers may have the same spirit of reckless abandon as Lord Byron, who created the first known use of carpe diem as a noun, in a letter of 1817. But travelling the world on a gap year should not be a case of being mad, bad and dangerous to know. It should be about seizing the day and embarking on an adventure, whilst simultaneously plucking each day, to get the most out of it. And, to do that, you need good travel health to underpin your global travel fiesta.
The gap year guide with a carpe diem focus
This is the ethos of Pinpoint Travel Health’s new guide for gap year travellers of all ages, whether they are taking a break pre-uni or deciding on a sabbatical after being chained to an office desk for many a year. It is a guide that focuses on both individual travellers, including solo women travellers, and families, recognising that the ‘avatar’ of a gap year traveller, or backpacker, is sometimes very different from the popular stereotype.
The guide makes travel health its focus, because that is the starting point for a great trip. You are not going to max the most out of your airfare and rail pass expenditure, if you are suffering from a tropical disease or a bout of malaria. You would be as sick as one of the Amazon’s parrots, if you discovered that your time in South America meant you could not travel on to the Middle East, simply because you had failed to realise there was a requirement for yellow fever certification in order to gain entry to the country.
Promoting healthy gap year travel
Some travel health in the guide is of the self-help kind – going prepared with the right stand-by medicals that can help you survive a few ups and downs. Other advice is practical and some is about personal safety. But there is lots more besides, whether that helps you navigate the local culture or find useful Apps that can steer you towards the help you need.
This is a gap year guide that approaches things differently from most, recognising that, to bag that thrill of trekking across the desert by jeep, or watching the sun rise over Kilimanjaro, you need to be well enough to do so.
But it is also a guide that is absolutely focused on trying to work within a backpacker’s tight budget and making sure that they budget for all that is required. In that sense, it is about helping the gap year traveller make financial provision for the travel vaccinations and antimalarial treatments they will absolutely require, as they make their way around the world, but also not spending money on those that are not required.
Pinpoint Travel Health Briefs
Here, it draws its point of difference from the Pinpoint Travel Health service that utilises sophisticated technology and the latest world health data, to allow gap year travellers, and others, to plan their travel vaccination and antimalarial strategies with pinpoint precision and according to their own age and medical conditions.
This is so clever, it will also adjudge what travel health precautions you need to take, according to what sort of work you intend to do overseas and where you intend to do it. With other factors considered too, it is the travel health planning you need for your gap year trip and your gap year trip alone. That can really save you a buck or two.
So, if you are ready to seize the day, pack the backpack, ram the rucksack full and put pins in the map, make sure you allow the Pinpoint Travel Health system to analyse that map too and help you stay healthy.
Pluck the joy out of each day, by being fit enough to relish all that lays ahead, rather than having to curtail your trip and return back home through sickness.
Use Pinpoint Travel Health’s Travel Health Brief service today and leave no gaps in your travel health planning.