A Year in the Life of a Tour Leader - March

March — When the Madness Begins (and So Does Everything Else)

It’s 14:12, early April. I’m on a high-speed train slicing through the French countryside at 320 km/h, back to home, back to family.

My paperwork is done. My group is gone. My voice has finally stopped narrating things.

For the first time in weeks, no one needs me.

So I put music on. One song leads to another, and suddenly I’m back in my twenties—dating a singer, crossing borders for love, spending money I didn’t have, realising it was all smoke and mirrors… and yet, here I am. Still moving. But having found love, after a few trials. And still living what some would call a crazy life. I call it a life full of experiences.

Mostly thanks to this job.

And since my brain has decided to open the emotional archives, let’s talk about March.

March is when the machine starts again. No warm-up. No gentle transition. Just—go.

Two tours.

Two season openings.

Two different clients.

A train, a suitcase, unpack, repack, repeat.

Birthdays piling up—friends, family… and mine, quietly slipping through somewhere between a briefing and a headcount.

No cake, no candles, no pause. Just another day on tour.

Except this year, March decided to compensate. A baby was born in my family. On my birthday. Life arriving, as I was out there guiding strangers through theirs. I smiled through the day, did my job, told my stories… and stole a few seconds alone later to let it sink in.

Some moments are too big to share with a group.

Behind those two tours lived about ten others.

Research still ongoing for new itineraries.

Routes checked and rechecked.

Suppliers called.

Last-minute changes adjusted.

Backup plans quietly sitting in the corner like well-trained soldiers.

And an exam.

Of course there was an exam.

Sat it between two tours, slightly sleep-deprived, mildly delirious… and somehow passed. Which proves that adrenaline is an underrated learning method.

Meanwhile, life admin was playing its usual game:

move the doctor’s appointment, reschedule the vet, ignore the paperwork pile growing in the corner.

Because once the season starts, everything that isn’t urgent becomes invisible.

Then comes the real shift.

You go from being yourself… to being responsible for twenty strangers.

Just like that.

The first tour of the season is always special. You are the first to test everything:

the itinerary,

the timing,

the small cracks no one saw coming.

You fix things for the ones who will follow.

You build relationships for the season.

You smile your way through uncertainty and call it “experience.”

And then—something happens.

One of my travellers starts fainting.

At first, we hope it’s nothing. Then we know it’s something. And then comes the moment no one prepares you for: helping someone realise they need to go home.

She understands before we say it.

And somewhere in that conversation, unspoken but present, is the truth:

this might be her last trip.

This is the part of the job no brochure will ever mention, the sad part of this job. You just have to care as much as you can and deal with your own feelings of sadness for that person.

And yet, in the middle of that… there is joy.

Because March is also reunion season.

Drivers, guides, hoteliers, café owners—the people who make the tour happen behind the scenes.

We haven’t seen each other in months, and suddenly it’s hugs, laughter,

“you survived winter?”

“barely, you?”

Some of them are not just colleagues anymore. They’re part of a strange, seasonal family.

You pick up exactly where you left off.

And somewhere between two coffees and a rushed lunch, you realise how much these people have carried you through the years.

Even as you quietly start preparing to move on.

Because this March, something felt different.

One of these tours felt like a goodbye.

Not dramatic. Not announced. Just… a quiet knowing.

While all of this is happening, I’m already in April.

Preparing the next groups.

Adjusting itineraries.

Anticipating problems that don’t exist yet.

And also building something new—my own business, my own tours, my own way of doing things.

Which means my brain is now running two parallel lives:

the one I’m living…

and the one I’m creating.

No pressure.

March reminded me of something simple and brutal:

This job doesn’t wait for you to be ready.

It pulls you in—messy, emotional, unfinished—and expects you to show up anyway.

It asks you to care deeply for people you’ve just met and that you will never see again.

To carry joy and heartbreak in the same breath.

To celebrate life… even when you’re far from your own.

And sometimes, life still finds you.

In a message.

In a photo.

In the knowledge that somewhere, on the exact day you were guiding a group through history, a new story began in your own family.

And somehow, both matter equally.