Travel But Don’t Be Annoying About it
Tips for unlocking real travel in a fake world.
Photo Cred: Sadie McClure
There are more travel vlogging, dreadlocked men with fire-dancing fiancées than there are Sprinter vans left in the free world. If I donated a dollar for every bench seat that folds into a craft corner/meditation room/toilet seat, I’d be indebted to Road Carney’s with Bell’s Palsy for the rest of my waking life.
“Travel” has gotten out of hand. It’s become gamified and inauthentic. It’s also bred a lot of annoying subsets of people who won’t. stop. recording.
The good news is that this isn’t what travel’s about. Despite indications otherwise, travelling isn’t about telling every man, woman, and child that your cell phone has arrived in a new country.
In fact, if there is no data, you have still travelled.
Travel can involve preserving moments, but it shouldn’t be for content, country-counting, or followers. It’s about exposure, shaping your point of view, trying new things, learning how little you know, getting in and out of trouble, and contracting a parasite that’ll give you irreversible IBS.
For these reasons, not every trip—despite our earnest attempt—ends up as travel. The majority of trips fall in the “vacation” bucket.
Exhibit A: A trip to Delhi, India (yes, there is “travel” potential). However, you stay at a gated Hyatt Regency where your top exposure is eating hotel chicken curry between Imodiums (C29H33ClN2O2).
Exhibit B: An all-inclusive girl’s trip spent twerking to Daddy Yankee’s Shaky Shaky for 7 days and 6 nights.
Stepping outside of the vacation and entering uncontrived travel requires a cocktail of time and distance, with a healthy dose of fear/risk/discomfort. It’s a delicate balance that becomes increasingly difficult to reach as we get older, incur debts, have a career, or simply, become too logical to blow our savings and stability on an adventure.
Additionally, the more we work and the more stressed out we become, the harder it is to unlock authentic travel. Weeklong trips are spent decompressing and getting back to a level of well-being that wouldn’t cause a drugstore blood pressure cuff to factory reset. Eventually, as responsibility grows and time feels scarce, travel becomes like a 24V Mist Maker at a theme park: rare, kind of delightful, but superficially satisfying,
While we have the freedom to create moments for travel throughout our lives, it’ll never be easier than when you’re young, between gigs, or have been dumped (and are fueled by revenge). Creating the space and time required for genuine travel (not just decompression or beach-twerking) gets harder year after year.
So, gather round and listen closely: if you have the opportunity to go somewhere interesting and it vaguely makes sense, do it.
Your life exposures and experiences compound. While you can still be worldly without travelling through books, following interests, and meeting people, travel is a shortcut. It’s a hack. And it has the power to alter your trajectory.
When you leave your comfort zone for a place unknown, the world feels shinier. Time slows down, allowing you to huff in more of everything. When our sameness gets disrupted, alternate realities for what’s possible emerge. Travel brings out a heightened awareness and stronger vibration.
Simply put, crazy shit happens when you travel. Chance encounters, free giveaways, and “right place, right time” moments work overtime. Fun and magical things that rarely happen under routine unfold organically and often. Our openness creates good juju that the world responds to in kind.
Ultimately, travel helps us to realize that we’re not boxed in and there’s a literal whole world out there waiting for us. Travel also has a way of forcing us to slow down and take ourselves less seriously.
Whether you feel the effects of your travel at the moment or don’t realize it until you’re home, you’ve been given a lil’ life booster. You’ve been hit with a refreshed dose of ideas, stories, and ways of being that can shape your next chapter (if you let them).
Tips for Travelling (Not Just Vacationing)
Avoid the cushy—Listen, a cushy-ass trip with a high thread count has a time and a place (e.g. an R&R treat-yo-self weekend so that you can drop your shoulders and stop clenching your ass.) But real travel isn’t meant to be coddled or easy. If you bubble-wrap yourself to retain comfort, you’ll miss the real people who’ll show you real things.
Take time—Time is our most precious asset and it’s not easy to claim. Needing to work and make money is real. This said, if your insides are screaming for new experiences, you’re bored and feeling stuck— hunny, you may need to pull a power move. Take all the time you can manage and then add a day to recover on the tail-end. To break out of your monotony, re-shine your lens, and really travel, you need breathing room.
Say “yes”—Only eating in comfortable restaurants and swimming in salt water pools will maintain your pre-travel status quo. Real travel involves breaking old patterns and adding new experiences. This means agreeing to and seeking out things you’d generally shut down. You should still do what you want (mostly), but should extend your limits. Release control and allow things to unfold. It’s a rare opportunity to see where life wants you to go.
Get a little scared—We’re not talking about renting a motorcycle with your G1 or seeking cheap thrills. But similarly to saying “yes”, it’s important to step outside of your comfort zone and take a calculated risk. Travel somewhere daring, do the high altitude hike, ride the donkey, take the overnight bus, eat the weird thing, jump into the ocean, or accept the invite. To get something different, you have to do something different. The more you put yourself out there, the more you’ll get in return.
Have a purpose—Travelling without a plan or real itinerary is great and may be exactly what you need. However, if your travel extends longer than a month or two, just partying, eating in restaurants, and hanging out with people you meet along the way can grow stale. Having a purpose like biking across the country, learning a new skill, or working under the table on a sailboat will get you into the real local scene. It injects more depth into your travel.
Put the distractions away– Are you really going to look at 45 phone shots of the you “pinching” the Leaning Tower of Pisa? No, you’re not. Using your phone as a clutch, spending too long making a plan for the day, or compulsively taking photos is a distraction. It’s preventing you from living in the moment. So, as my Aussie friend (whom I met travelling) would say, “Don’t be a happy snappa!”.
Go solo—The idea of a solo trip can range from intimidating to straight up terrifying. It’s a major leap. But travelling by yourself removes barriers and offers a more untethered experience. When you’re alone, more people want to hang out, invite you to places, and let you into their world. When travelling as a couple, if a stranger invites you somewhere, you’re forced to ask: Christians or swingers? As a solo traveller, there’s an openness that initiates camaraderie.
Vacations can be inactive, but travel—by definition—is active. Travel lets you live out your imagination. You never know who you’re going to meet or what you’ll be taught along the way. We hold onto our travel—even without Reels.