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Disclosure: I am happy to be a ‘Sleepy Ambassador’ in the Pukka Herbal Teas ‘Sleep With Ease’ campaign in return for a complimentary box of Pukka Herbal Teas – including the wonderful Night Time Organic – as they are delicious and because I love tea!

Travel and Sleep: How to get a good night’s sleep while travelling

Just recently, the people at Pukka Herbal Teas got in touch and asked if I’d like to be their ‘Sleepy Ambassador’.

Well, of course, I said yes. And not just because they promised to send me lots of their delicious organic teas to try but because tea and me and sleep are a triple match made in heaven.

I absolutely love tea and I love sleep. But I will admit that getting a pukka nights sleep while travelling is not always easy and that’s why, wherever I am in the world, I stick to a bedtime routine.

I can hardly believe it but it’s been TEN years since the backpacking husband and I, having found ourselves with an empty-nest, sold our home and cars and all our possessions in order to travel the world long term.

That means I have literally slept in thousands of unfamiliar beds over that time.

Except, of course, during night time flights, of which there have been many: probably because I’ve always travelled in economy, and even on long-haul flights, I find sleeping while sitting upright impossible. I have to admit that I have never once ever slept on a flight. Ditto trains or buses or cars.

Although, once I get to where I’m going, well that’s a whole different story.

Once I’m checked into wherever I’m staying then I’m very good at sleeping!

Over the years we have been travelling through time-zones and jet-lag, we have often spent just one night somewhere before moving on. On occasion, we’ll spent a few nights somewhere or even extend that to a week or two. Usually, that means staying at a budget hostel or a mid-priced B&B homestay or if we feel we can splash out a bit and in larger cities, we tend to choose a nice mid-range hotel. I usually book our stays with Booking Dotcom (affiliated link).

TRAVEL AND SLEEP

Of course, these photos are the best of the rest and don’t represent all the nights we’ve tried to sleep on a bench at a bus station or the floor at airports or in much less luxurious places where I’ve not bothered taking a photo of the bed!

Sometimes we’ll travel slowly and then we’ll stay somewhere for a few weeks or even several months. This has been the case in Central America, the Caribbean, and in France, and now here in Scotland.

If it’s not a housesitting job (as in France) then we’ll certainly be looking to rent a small house (here in Scotland) or an apartment (Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi) or a hut on the beach (in Thailand and Malaysia and the Caribbean) and along the way we’ll hope to get lucky in scoring somewhere with a comfortable bed and decent pillows on which to rest our heads.

But we can’t always be picky and we do have to make the most of what’s available and affordable too.

So, faced with a multitude of night time scenarios in many countries and cities and places all over the world – how do I make sure to I get the sleep I desperately need and not just a few hours of restless napping? Well, for me it’s all down to establishing a sleep-inducing night time routine.

And that’s why I think Pukka Herbal Tea and I are simply made for each other!

Did you know that the UK’s bestselling organic bedtime tea is Pukka Night Time and it’s also their bestselling tea globally? Pukka Organic Night Time Tea is a dreamy, soothing blend to encourage a blissfully restful sleep.

The main ingredients in Pukka Night Time Organic: Valerian acts as a natural sedative to ease tension and anxiety Lavender flower, oatstraw flowering tops, chamomile flower and limeflower soothe, calm and ground your body and mind.

How this tea works:

1. Encourages undisturbed good quality sleep
2. Promotes a healthy sleeping pattern
3. Soothes, calms and grounds the body and mind.

I personally feel that a sleep routine is essential to prepare the mind and body for a restorative and peaceful night’s sleep but it’s not always easy and so I do have a few tips and tricks to share with you about how to get a good sleep while travelling.

But first of all you should decide what kind of sleeper you are and identify your body/mind dosha.

In Ayurvedic medicine, there are three dosha types and which type you are will affect your sleep.

You can take the Dosha Quiz HERE

TRAVEL AND SLEEP

There are many other factors too that will influence the quality of someone’s sleep – comfort and noise and disturbance issues are in my experience the worst nuisances. This is why an eye mask and a set of ear plugs or noise cancelling headphones are essential kit in your backpack – just in case you find yourself in a room next to a rowdy party or above a bar playing loud music or there’s a noisy air conditioning unit or squeaky ceiling fan. The next nuisance to sleep in my experience is probably feeling too hot or too cold. To counter these aspects, travelling with a few comfort inducing accessories and a healthy routine while getting ready for bed will prepare you both mentally and physically for sleep and a good night’s rest.

THE POWER OF SLEEP

I definitely have a VATA dosha – a busy mind and a tendency to be restless in the early hours. So it’s important to me that I feel warm and relaxed and that I calm my busy mind before I sleep. I will set an alarm to wake me up so I don’t have to worry about missing an early flight or my breakfast in the morning and I make a note of anything else I might think about or worry over in the night as the act of writing it down takes it out of my head. Then I relax in a warm bath (if I have one available to me) and I will often infuse my bath with a herbal tea bag.

Pukka ‘Feel New’ with its aromatic fusion of aniseed, fennel and cardamom is amazing in a bath.

If my eyes are dry from being inside a plane and tired from jetlag, then I’ll often pop a couple of teabags on my eyes too as a relaxing and restorative compress.

Pukka ‘Love’ with rose, chamomile, and lavender would be perfect for this.

Then I sip a warm cup of herbal tea in the bed just before I put the light out.

This is a routine I stick to wherever I am in the world.

To that end, I’ll never travel anywhere without my own selection and supply of assorted herbal teabags in my backpack.

And right now, even though I’m not travelling, I’m still sticking to my night time routine and I’m really enjoying drinking Pukka Organic Night Time Tea because:

1. It helps me to drift off into a peaceful rest.
2. I know it has been expertly blended with the finest quality organic herbs for a bedtime routine.
3. It helps me to enjoy a moment to unwind before bed.
4. It helps me to enjoy a moment to settle before bed.
5. It helps me to enjoy a moment of calm before bed.
6. I get to enjoy a delicious bedtime blend of chamomile and lavender and valerian.

As ‘A Sleepy Ambassador’ and having now tried all the delicious teas that were sent to me by Pukka Herbs as part of their ‘Sleep With Ease’ campaign, I’m now a great fan of Pukka Herbal teas and I know they’ll absolutely be my herbal tea choice in the future. Although, I still can’t quite settle on deciding my absolute favourite daytime blend because there are so many to choose from on the Pukka Herbs Website.

Is it ‘Womankind’ with its blend of cranberry, rose, and vanilla? Or Ginseng Matcha Green with Sencha Korean green tea and Jeju Matcha power, lemongrass, ginger, liquorice, lemon and red ginseng root? Choices… choices!

Luckily, the Day to Night Collection of Pukka Herbal Teas is a selection box of several blends and each (plastic-free) teabag is wrapped in an individual recyclable envelope package, which makes them perfect for enjoying at home – now that I’m back in Scotland – and also perfect for and stashing into my backpack when I start travelling again!

Notice: I want you to know that I received NO payment of money from Pukka Herbal in return for writing this post. I wanted to write this post about travel and sleep and tea because they are three things in life that are important to me.

I am happy to be a ‘Sleepy Ambassador’ in the Pukka ‘Sleep With Ease’ campaign in return for a sample box of Pukka Teas – including the wonderful Night Time Organic – with compliments of Pukka Herbs.

I am also happy to be associated with Pukka Herbs on this initiative because I appreciate that since 2016 Pukka Herbs have donated over £2,000,000 to environmental and social causes. They are a carbon neutral company and use sustainable packaging. They also use a respectable and sustainable fair-trade system for the harvesting of wild herbs and aromatic plants.

You can find out more information about Pukka Herbal on their WEBSITE and by using the Campaign Hashtag #PukkaNightTime on Twitter and Instagram.

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