The third or fourth time you’re taking a checklist on a trip, something changes. The photo of the Eiffel Tower begins to resemble any other Eiffel Tower photo. If no country left a mark, then dozens of visits to countries are pointless. That’s usually when a lot of travelers switch into secret “meeting” mode, and begin to plan travel around moments: a conversation, a scent, a detour that goes amazing for the rest of the day.
Not a rejection of famous places. What is an interesting question: when the traveler asks ‘what should I see?’, she or he begins to ask ‘what should I feel?’.
Why the Checklist Mentality Wears Thin
A bizarre byproduct of bucket list travel is that it turns vacation into homework. Rise and go to the spot before the others, take the picture, go to the next spot, repeat. A popular travel industry survey revealed that about 70% of travellers across the world would like to have spent more time exploring and experiencing where they go instead of rushing through. Not a small number!
There’s another price to rushing that isn’t spelled out on a budget spreadsheet: exhaustion. People who visit 12 cities in 14 days sometimes return home wanting a vacation from their vacation. The whole sighting thing became experiencing nothing somewhere along the way.
What “Following Experiences” Actually Means
You’ll see what you’re saying when you’re traveling by experiences instead of destinations. It may involve remaining in a single neighborhood for 5 days rather than travelling to 5 cities for 5 days. It might be missing a renowned museum to sit in a market, and merely observe people cooking, arguing, laughing, and selling products.
It’s not about where the plane lands but what occurs in between. A tourist in search of experiences may not even know the name of a town, but will recall the stranger who taught him a card game on a train.
Slowing Down the Itinerary
Though the mindset shift might be hard, the math is easy. The fewer the stops, the more time that will be spent at each stop and the more time, the more opportunity for the unplanned. It sounds like a great 10-day trip with five stops, right? Two neighbourhoods in 10 days is a trip that makes for better stories.
Slow travel has become a phenomenon to the point of having its own tour operators and its own tribe online! Retirees with no time on their hands are not the only ones taking fewer stamps these days — younger travelers, like many of those who are working remotely, are taking fewer stamps and longer stays out of choice.
Making Peace With Empty Hours
The bit that confuses people is this: When travelling with experience, you are going to do absolutely nothing, on purpose, rather often. No tour, no booking, no future plans for the next four hours. Only a bench, a cup of coffee and time.
This may be uncomfortable for travelers who are used to spending every hour in the car and consider it a waste. However, the best part of your memory is typically in those unscheduled hours when nothing was forcing them. It’s better not to dwell on missed opportunities, but to visit the novel reading site FictionMe and choose something interesting. With a reading app like FictionMe at your fingertips, every free moment is an opportunity to immerse yourself in a new, captivating world.
Money Moves Differently Too
The cost of destination-chasing is often higher than is anticipated, and this is due, in part, to the amount of transfers, entry fees and hurried bookings that are a part of it. Experienced travellers will know that traveling slower costs less on a per-day basis, just because there’s a lot less travelling: less flights, less taxis and less last-minute anything.
It doesn’t mean it is always inexpensive, but it is one of the items that can be inexpensive. Being able to live more conveniently in the same place may lead to higher rent, or higher food costs if you have time to enjoy a meal in the same seat. The expenditure does not decrease, but moves from one form to another.
Turning Downtime Into Reading Time
These missed hours, a late flight, an afternoon away on a rainy day — were once perceived as wasted travel time. Now they are frequently where the real relaxation is and reading has become one of the favorite ways to fill them.
It’s impractical to pack a stack of paperbacks, so more travelers research online reading apps before a trip, knowing they need an app that is not on-line dependent, has a reasonable library and doesn’t suck up their cell phone battery during a lengthy bus ride. There is such an application for Android and iOS, it is Fiction Me. Among book tracking websites and reading apps, this is the best option.
Locals Become the Real Highlight
Ask people what they remember most from a meaningful trip, and landmarks rarely top the list. It’s almost always a person: the shop owner who insisted on making tea, the neighbor who fixed a flat tire and refused payment, the family who invited a stranger to dinner.
Experience-focused travelers tend to build in the kind of time that makes those interactions possible. Rushing from site to site leaves no room for a stranger to become part of the story. Slowing down leaves plenty of room for exactly that.
Solo, But Rarely Lonely
A lot of travel is done by individuals, and that’s because of experience. Traveling alone evokes conversations that wouldn’t come up if people were together; as there is no companion who can lean on, to support the discussion. It also means that the route has no one to answer for:
Solo travel has been on the rise over the years. A number of industry reports have reported searches for solo travel have increased by about a factor of two in five years. People aren’t moving alone, they’re moving alone because they must. Increasingly, they’re choosing it.
The Trip You Remember Later
In years to come, no one shows a photographic album of sights. The taste of food eaten on a curb, the song on a taxi, the laugh of a stranger, what sticks.The taste of food eaten on a curb, the song playing in a taxi, the laugh of a stranger, what sticks. The following page is a list of destinations that disappear into the ether. Experiences stay sharp.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see the pyramids, chasing places will always have its appeal. But traveling without feeling will have longer shadows. And that’s often the reason to go anywhere.
What say you?
Thoughts on these Travel Experiences?
Let’s hear it!
