Why I am losing to jet lag

On the plane and about to land in Lima, Peru

My recent trip to Peru has made me realize that one of the worst things about travelling is the resulting jet lag.

I am having one of the worst cases of jet lag that I can remember. My internal body clock just can’t seem to get itself aligned with the appropriate time zone. The funny thing is that the leap in time isn’t even that big- Peru is in the same time zone as Chicago, which means that London is a mere 6 hours ahead.

At the Colca Canyon in Peru, the world 2nd deepest canyon

This made for some comical wake-ups on those first days in Peru since internally I was still on “London time”: at 2:00am in Cuzco, en route to seeing Machu Picchu, I would jolt awake, my body on high alert and ready to start the day (after all, it was 8 am in London, way past my usual ‘get out of bed’ time). Liebling, who usually sleeps like a log 99% of the time, regardless of country or time zone changes, would be gently snoring away as I contemplated the hotel room ceiling and willed myself to sleep until at least 6 am. Always failing miserably, I would resign myself to quietly pulling on my clothes and taking my Kindle down to the hotel lobby to read until day break. This scenario quietly repeated itself until the very end of our two week trip, where I somehow managed to “sleep in” until about 5:45 am. Sweet.

In Cuzco, Peru

The jet lag sucked then, but believe me, I wasn’t complaining (too much). Waking up early gave me the distinct advantage of being able to plan the day’s itinerary with the help of the guide book, catch up on my reading and emails, and have a bit of alone time. The REAL problem came when at the end of my awesome trip I came back to London and started back to work this past Monday.

This week was sheer calamity… Because I had the exact opposite problem to the one in Peru. This week, in London, I was on “Peru time”- I couldn’t seem to wake up.

I slept through my alarm 3 times this week, which meant 3 mad dashes to the shower for a half-wash (i.e. a wash of all the critical areas but not much more), 3 sprints to the tube to catch my train to work (which only comes every 12 minutes, might I add), and numerous utterances of expletives due to aforementioned sleep-ins and my weak, uncooperative body.

Unglamorously catching up on some zzz’s in the Paris Airport on my way back to London from Peru

6:30 am in London (my usual wake up time) felt like 12:30 am in Peru (the time zone my body was in ). The result: a very discombobulated me. Not the best when you work with a bunch of [very energetic] kids and have a “full-on” week at work consisting of lesson planning, papers to grade, and meetings to attend.

I try to get to bed early in an effort to mitigate the damage but the outcome is always the same: I positively have to wrench myself out of bed in the morning, tear myself from the clutches of sweet, sweet sleep. It is painful, tragic, and upsetting.

But I don’t think I’m alone in this feeling. Do you suffer from jet lag? Do you have any remedies for it? I need help!

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