Author is right, after you travel (and slum it a bit) you realize that after surface level cultural/food/history differences everyone kinda/sorta wants similar things in life and while people's life stories are interesting, you start noticing patterns.
OTOH, (Caveat:I don't have enough money for this) there is nothing that recharges you more than first class tickets somewhere beautiful and getting pampered in a resort. People (esp in their 20's) poo poo this. Rightly so, you should be experiencing the "real culture". But me, I've done that already, I'm gonna sit in the Four Seasons.
P.S: Another thing I'd suggest the author try is fitness trips! Big Hikes, marathons, surfing competitions? Nothing speedruns cultural competency like doing a really difficult thing somewhere new. Get Travel insurance.
Then again I already live in a beautiful place and I’ve always been great at being a tourist in my own city. Ask me again in 10 years and maybe I’ll have your outlook.
I like lush beautifully designed resorts, my room cleaned, and top-notch local fare room service, but all the other service song-and-dance, the waiting on you hand and foot (as is typical in some developing nations), I can do without.
If you feel guilty about the class difference, then do what i do, and tip very generously. I like to leave $100 tip on the bed for housekeeping (at fancy hotels) upon checkout. Tip your taxi / uber well. you get the idea.
I've also done the resort thing, and its not for me. The luxury and pampering many seem to love just makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. I also don't like the planned outings and such. Even if the thing we're brought to see/experience is objectively amazing, I'm always made to feel like an object being processed by a machine: line up here, get your pass, line up there, look at thing / do thing, move along, NEXT!
I'm finding more contentment just being where I'm at and taking advantage of the things that are close by.
I’ve narrowed down where I like to live and do that, after having seen what other developed nations have to offer. (There are parts of the developing world I could enjoy but I don’t see myself prioritizing them when I get back into the extended travel circuit.)
I can slum it purely for the social aspect, and then pamper myself at a Four Seasons tier place on the weekend - subsidized largely by credit card rewards points. Nice places are inherently not nearly as social as nice hostels. But I can also fly a paramour in, du jour.
As long as my health stays great my 30s have been a god-tier version of my 20s and I can see my 40s going that way as well. My 20s was mired by chasing rites of passages and learning I didn't like or want that. Doing the power couple thing with a fellow corporate climber, moving in, etc. Classically, I’m fine with the most aimless anti-intellectual and visually attractive partners as soon as I had the option. “Wife changing money” is what they colloquially say.
Film festivals, music festivals, retreats, the “socialite circuit”, living other places for a couple of months… the allure of that hasn't gone away, for me. In the mean time, life is just speeding by working and saving again, staying entertained in my chosen city, until I actually do something entrepreneurial again.
Not really. It's sour grapes imho.
As I get older I take business class more, because I prefer the comfort over having a few extra days. Ask younger me and he would have taken the extra holiday days
+ Nature trips. I went to Taiwan for 7 days experiencing cities, shores, mountains, forests, lakes and gorges. Holy cow the most underrated country and travel with a cherry on the pie of having your favourite musician playing at the end of the trip.
My mother started traveling alone after 50. She's 62 this year and I think the only years without any traveling she had were the COVID years.
Same for me more or less. Never was interested in traveling until around 35.
It’s possible to have fun very easily, even a very relaxing vacation and not have most of the money siphoned away by some corporation like a giant resort company that plays fast and loose with local resources because the government is desperate for employment
From first-hand experience, 100% this absolutely. The most relaxed I have ever felt in my life (and with a decrease in my resting heart rate to prove it, thanks Apple Watch) was a nice flight and a week at a high-end all-inclusive with just myself and a spa and pool day every day.
And I totally agree with the realization one can come to about how similar we all are after experiencing what others may call “different” cultures.
Granted I still have the travel itch all the time, it’s difficult to scratch that itch with obligations at home, but you do what you can, and take the passport stamps as they come!
On the other hand, the solo traveler is a recent phenomenon largely enabled by 20th century technology and political developments.
I know there are programs which travel the world as a group, but they tend to be very ends-focused (“startup travelers”) etc.
So, the era of time when the Earth had open, undefined spaces (“smooth space” as defined by the philosopher Deleuze) seems to be basically over forever, barring an apocalyptic event. We might have to wait for new planets to see nomadic societies existing again.
Another thing I do, is avoid online menues at least ahead of visiting a spot and make my selections once I arrive. I can't say it's better, but it definitely keeps the serendipitous and suspense that I remember from my younger years before everything was online and had a million reviews.
> when the Earth had open, undefined spaces
For physical spaces, you're correct, but it is worth noting that other spaces have appeared and thereafter made the same transition. The internet, for example, is a pretty clear-cut case of a striated system today -- it facilitates desires into tightly-controlled pathways and channels by which means value can be extracted. But in its early years, it was almost totally smooth: communities like Geocities and MySpace demonstrate this through their total stylistic incoherency. While it is of course different than actually going to a new place, it's still a rare thing -- to experience a "totally new" place, unblemished and unoccupied.
And it's not impossible for striated spaces to be deterritorialized: as Deleuze points out, this is in fact a natural tendency of striated space, and it takes active effort (e.g. by a capitalist world-system) to maintain the existing striation.
The early internet definitely was a smooth space and the 90s cyberpunk mood really echoes a lot of Deleuze. Nick Land, the CCRU, and similar thinkers were very influenced by D&G. Great reading, if a bit sad now looking back.
I'm not sure how the Earth itself would be deterritorialized, though, as I feel like you'd need to undo basically everything from property rights to the Westphalian concept of a state. Seems unlikely to me, barring anarchy/apocalypse or some kind of AI god that confiscates all land and enforces a ban on property ownership. Perhaps if the northern European model of free range, open access to lands could be extended over more area.
I think people like Marco Polo were not so uncommon for most of history.
I used to love traveling too. I would go to many places, meet new people, try new foods, and see pretty things. It made me happy and helped me learn a lot.
But then, like you, I stayed home more. I moved to a small town. Life became slow but nice. I made new friends, grew plants, cooked food, and played games. I started to feel happy without going far.
I liked how you said, “the connection to people not being punctuated by an impending departure.” That means a lot. When we stay, we make deep friendships that last.
Maybe one day we will travel again. But right now, this calm, quiet life feels good. Maybe this is a new kind of adventure.
Thank you. You helped me understand my own feelings better.
If anyone else comes to Kazakhstan and wants to see "the real country", I'd humbly suggest looking outside the two largest cities because they're the only places that have seen any development over the past three decades. My city hasn't changed at all since the end of the 1980s, you look at the photographs from that era and the only difference you see are significantly increased numbers of cars. That's pretty typical.
If you ever wonder why some people have a nostalgia for the Soviet Union — that's why, all significant infrastructure was built back then and hasn't been touched since. The Chinese have been pouring some money into infrastructure for the past few years (mostly power plants and railroads), but the volume is incomparable with ye olde days since they are doing it across the globe and don't have infinite money.
Some of our "patriots" become aggressive when you mention this, so you might want to keep it in mind.
A commenter down below called us "a third-world country", and while that's silly (pretty much only because we're "second world" by definition), it's only fair.
This was mostly a ski trip and my first time here, so I barely got a chance to get out of town - but I do intend to come back next winter and go visit some friends in the western region :)
There's also the brain drain: since 1991, there's been a massive emigration to Russia of all places, which has slowed down a bit since 2022, but it's still going on — we have a negative migration balance with them. That in itself is quite telling.
However, it doesn’t bother me. The idea of constant travel can feel a bit forced, because Western society emphasises it so much as a way to feel fulfilled. But, happiness and fulfillment exists in a thousand other things. Isaac Asimov, for example, spent most of his life in a New York apartment, writing articles, books, and letters. He loved it so much that the first thing he did after coming home from heart surgery was to rush towards his typewriter. He disliked being distracted from writing so much that he wasn't even willing to travel to Hollywood to get his novels adapted.
So, while travelling occasionally is enriching and helps me mentally, I am okay with the idea of just sitting at home and working on my projects, being excited about programming, writing, and learning.
Growing up in post-communist Bulgaria during the 1990s and 2000s, I had never been abroad with my family as a child. At an age of 18 years, I started working from home as a PHP programmer for a guy from Switzerland I found online. When he invited me to his place in Basel for a 2-week visit, to me it felt like flying in space. I was valuing every second of my stay there like I am on another planet.
There’s also something powerful in returning to a place after many years. When you see how it’s changed, you might begin to understand how societies grow, shift, and evolve. And in doing so, you also begin to see your own world more clearly how it too has changed, often in ways you might not notice from inside your everyday bubble.
Different societies don’t just look different they understand the world differently. And sometimes that can be painful to confront. In Western cultures, individualism often makes it seem logical to live and work far from family, sometimes because your hometown couldn’t offer things. But maybe that wasn’t a failure of the system, maybe that was the system. One that only works when social bonds are weakened, everyones reflexes on human connection and personal sacrifice (grinding) is normalized.
Now, we live in a world where people struggle to understand how others think, vote, feel. A village in Uzbekistan, a town in Sicily, a city in the Midwest, or a neighborhood in New York they’re worlds apart, thats is very very obvious. I’ve been to many of these places, sometimes twice, and they’re not the same planet. And they’re drifting further apart.
But this isn’t new. The ancient Athenians were explorers, traders, thinkers, learners. They brought ideas home and reshaped their world. Yet, with time, even they began to say, "This is how it’s always been. Things are the same" They were resistant to understand the underlying mechanisms, as the world around them shifted. Their knowledge came through a lens that blinded them to the reasons of transformation. And eventually, their dominance faded suddenly and decisively driven by the same forces they could no longer truly understand.
It’s a pattern worth remembering. Because maybe, just maybe, we’re living through something similar today. Seeling the world is an enabler for effective introspection. I avoid the touristy places though, they feel like crowded movie sets.
Do you think we might be seeing this bubble bursting now ?
It’s more of a reminder of that
Good for fomo and good for anyone looking to design a life; why not live in a place that enriches your body! Wherever you live, you can now find work that connects and enriches your mind. Your designed life provides so much of what you seek from travel but also community: getting to say hello to the same people each day for years.
The main reason is that I'm leaving a rich home life and quickly miss my people and the things we do together. Every other night a new place and a new hotel room, and a meal alone in a crowd. It feels weird to leave home specifically to get so uncomfortable. The opportunity cost grows, because my roots grow deeper every year.
I'm currently on one of these trips. The last ones felt exactly like what you described, so for this one, I went back to the drawing board.
This time, I dotted the solo journey with people I know. I meet with friends in different places every 7-10 days.
I also slowed waaaay down. This is a motorcycle trip, but I only average 100 km per day. I now have time to linger in cafés. I can read, sketch, or just work for a few hours. I can take the slow, twisty roads across national parks and avoid highways completely. The ride is shorter so I arrive refreshed.
It worked. This is one of the best trip I've taken in years. Above all, it's the first motorcycle trip I consider successful since 2019.
as i got older i focused on places where i already had contacts or where i could find someone through couchsurfing websites ahead of time. i never considered going to places where i could not make these contacts. the goal was to stay in those places and learn about the life of the people. the scenery on the way in between was just a bonus.
It's not the best way to travel, but it's the best way to be away from Berlin for a longer period, since my friends rarely have the same amount of flexibility with regards to work.
For me what I got out of travel was just being able to experience the “normalcy” of other countries, peoples, cultures. There was this romantic notion that I’d learn something really important about humanity or my place on the earth - all those thoughts in some way seem to exist on a more “conceptual” emotional depth, where you are experiencing and touring, rather than participating. Staying places allows more time for depth than going with the idea that you’ll be moving on.
The whole “digital nomad” trend, while like in a way laudable as a truly neat that it’s possible effect of globalization, still carries a sort of colonial, exchange-rate-maxxing exploitative vibe. It’s playing rich, in a way.
Still, it’s a big world, and it’s good if you can to experience some of it.
And the topic of whether wanting to travel will motivate one to make more money is a topic for a different thread altogether. It's probably difficult to bring that drive if one doesn't have it.
P.S. You forgot to post the Gokarna June '22 pics in your photo album. It took me a minute to realize it was you only after reading that you moved to Goa and seeing your Goa flat pic.
Also, some in their 30ies develop the urge to found a family and settle down.
Offtopic as it's not from the linked blog post, but this had me laughing:
> Today was my first day at this stealth startup. The boss (CEO) is a dick, but we’re building great stuff. The physical entertainment/tourism industry is a huge market, and it’s very possible that we’re going to be the next Disneyworld.
Just for context to other HNers, that quote is from a satire piece[1] and in no way was I building the next Disneyworld
I do not care for a single facet of it. Not the planning, or the reservations, of the attaining of paperwork. Packing or parking. Checking maps to see where my terminal might be. Pre-flight fondling by total strangers. Getting on a plane. Being on a plane. Getting off of a plane. Trying to find my way to wherever it is I am supposed to go, which I know in theory but must now execute. I also have a mild handicap which can make navigating some situations more difficult than it would otherwise be for someone normal. Seeing just kind of torture the word "breakfast" has undergone to appear in the hotel at morning.
Then there is the thing itself, whatever it is you are supposed to be seeing. Chances are, you won't even be able to get close to it. Apparently, you get to look at the Mona Lisa from something of a distance, and now less than a minute. Oooh. Then you should get a laminated card that says "Some photons bounced off of the Mona Lisa and were absorbed by my retina" so you can tell everyone.
And you're trapped wherever it is until your ticket home is valid.
Even if someone else is paying for it, I just have zero interest. Unfortunately, some friends have gotten into cruises and traveling, which leads to frequent exhortation that I, too, should travel, no matter how much I demur. Being pushed for travel was also an irritant at a previous job.
They say, "Well, think of all of the strange foods and new restaurants!" I spend more time at the international markets than most and, honestly, this city has plenty of restaurants I have yet to try, so if that were a motivating factor, I hardly need a plane ticket and itinerary to partake.
The furthest I have gone is about three hundred miles to take a close friend (he had a very terrible year of one disaster after another occur to him) to a concert to cheer him up.
and yes, you can do a lot of exploring locally too.
to your last point going to a concert with a friend, i think the important part here is the reason you did that, not the distance or even the destination. not even the concert. for me, having such a reason makes traveling all the more worthwhile.
I wouldn’t like traveling anymore either if I did it mainly to make money. Oops.
Breaking news: Hostels in third world countries loose their charm as you get older.
-this is still too early in life to come to hard realizations on experienced wisdom..
give it some time and tell me about it again in your 50s -
