Traveling is an exciting prospect, but the journey itself can be a drag. The promise of a new destination can be enough to sustain you during the endless hours of traveling, but if it takes longer than five of six hours, you will have to arm yourself with a modicum of patience. If the journey takes longer than twenty hours, it is a challenge (even more so if the destination is truly exciting). If you need to find the most effective time-killers for an upcoming trip, here are 7 best ways to pass the time during the long travels.

1. Activate your brain

One of the best and most effective way to pass the time during the long trip is to simply sleep through most of it, however a lot of the time we simply cannot sleep through the journey. In that case, the best course of action is to activate your brain as much as possible. This is where the booklets of Sudoku and crosswords come in handy. This might sound a bit antiquated, but it is much better for the eyes than to glare into the screen the whole time, and you’ll want to save the battery.

2. Read a book

Reading a book is an excellent pastime for a long trip – in fact, if the trip is longer than 20 hours, you can burn through an entire novel and feel enriched for it as you arrive to the destination. Of course, there is a sense of limitation when it comes to this activity – only several modes of travel allow a comfortable reading session. It is perfect for long airplane and train rides. However, it is not advisable for “jittery” types of traveling like car rides.

3. A journey as a soundtrack

Photo Credits: MusicOomph.com

Listening to music is one of the favorite pastimes of most people. Thankfully, we live in the day and age when you can plug your Focal Utopia headphones into your phone and enjoy a long and consistent soundtrack – or a set of soundtracks – throughout your trip. For example, you can burn through the highlights of the Beatles career and feel as if you have covered an era, you can listen to several operas if you love classical music or you can simply create your own mish-mash of songs that, in a way, tells your own story. The options are endless today and audio-dramas and concept albums are all fair game for a prolonged trip.

4. Draw it up

Another limited yet amazing way to spend time while you are traveling is to bring blank paper and a pencil and just let your mind wander as you “conjure up” a variety of images. Drawing is fun and quite stimulating for the brain. You do not have to be Leonardo da Vinci, nobody is judging you – you are doing this for yourself and nobody has to see your drawings afterwards. Furthermore, if you are a stickler for details, you can spend hours on end taking care of every leaf of grass or a strand of hair on your drawing.

5. Play a video game

If you own a digital device you can, naturally, kill your time by playing a video game. There is a whole range of popular video games that can be found online and the best thing about them is that a high percentage of these games are completely free. However, before you download any game, check out several lists and ranking sites online to find out if it is free-to-play but pay-to-win sort of an arrangement. Otherwise, it can get really frustrating down the line.

These 5 ways to pass the time work almost universally. Applying at least a few of them during your long journey should do the trick. The key thing is to choose the activity that can involve you for a longer period of time. For example, checking your social media repeatedly will stretch out the journey significantly, but if you are into drawing you can get lost in the finer details of your sketch and the hours will simply melt away. In a way, the key solution to passing the time during a long travel is to find the activity you can invest your time in.