Let's talk about travel

privilege, perspective and pauses

If I’m not overthinking a cultural trend, turning it into a reflective essay and landing it with a hot take, am I even me? Sit down, grab some chai, let’s chat.

First, let’s talk about our current social media lifecycle of people doing a thing quietly, that thing becoming a trend, and now everyone is doing that thing and that thing ends up losing its core meaning.

Alright, now, let’s apply this to travel.

There was a time when travel was something you saved up for, dreamed about, and whispered to yourself like a secret wish. It lived on bucket lists, in scrapbook corners, and in late-night conversations. It was a culmination of effort and longing. A reward.

But now? Travel has become a lifestyle. And yes, at the risk of sounding like a grumpy older millennial shaking her head at the algorithm, I’m still going to say it: We’ve lost something in the shift. Not to sound like a sour grape, but it’s become so common to see people traveling constantly, posting updates from exotic destinations as if it’s the new normal. The idea of a “vacation” has transformed into an ongoing routine rather than a special occasion.

There’s got to be a difference in the way we consume culture, food, and everything in-between that makes travel an eye-opening, horizon-widening act when it is done every few months vs when it’s done intentionally. The waiting, the saving up of money and your vacation days, the building of anticipation: it all adds to the depth of the experience. It makes the moment you finally step onto that cobbled street or hear a foreign language swirl around you that much richer.

When travel is rare, it’s sacred. You notice things more. You care more. You move slower. You’re not just ticking off a place: you’re letting it change you, even in tiny ways.

But when travel becomes routine, almost expected, we risk turning the extraordinary into the ordinary. We skim the surface. And we lose that small, beautiful ache of yearning that used to come with dreaming of a foreign destination.

Although, I do realize that the more you travel, the more you also travel like a local (which, let’s be honest, is often the best way to travel). You get better at blending in, at skipping the tourist traps, at finding the quiet coffee shop over the crowded monument. But that, too, takes away some of the charm. Because sometimes, the real magic lies in not knowing. In being wide-eyed and awkward. It's the awe, the unfamiliarity, the “wait, how do I order this?”, the feeling of being gloriously out of place.

When travel becomes second nature, it stops surprising you. It becomes easier, but it also becomes quieter? There’s a quiet erosion of wonder when every airport lounge starts to look the same, when every city is filtered through the lens of comparison. The uniqueness of a place softens around the edges when it’s immediately measured against your last adventure. I still remember my first trip abroad: the air smelled different. And I don’t think I can ever capture that special moment of awe ever again. But somewhere along the way, that raw awe got buried beneath the layers of travels that came after. Even though I’ve tried to space out our trips abroad every couple of years, giving each one room to breathe, nothing quite compares to the magic of that first time.

And don’t get me wrong, there’s privilege in being able to say such things. To travel often is a gift. But like all gifts, it comes with responsibility: especially when we show up in someone else’s home and treat it like a backdrop. They are real, living places with history, culture, and people who call them home. We forget that these places have their own stories, struggles, beauty beyond what our camera phone lens can capture. The more we travel, the more intentional we need to be about how we travel. Are we respecting the space, or simply passing through it?

Maybe what we need is to reframe or redo travel: not as an escape, but as a conversation. Not as a lifestyle accessory, but as a chance to stretch the limits of our understanding.

And sometimes, that conversation doesn’t need to happen on another continent. Sometimes, the most transformative journeys don’t really require a passport. It’s just in the willingness to notice the unfamiliar in the familiar.

Because if everything becomes a habit or a thing you do ever so often, we lose the quiet, clumsy, beautiful bits: the missed trains, the awkward google translations, the homesickness, the surprising kindness of strangers. The very things that make travel feel like travel.

So maybe the invitation isn’t to travel less, but to travel differently. With more honesty. With more curiosity. Maybe, with more pauses between the posts travels.

And let’s talk about one more side effect of all this globetrotting: the sudden, slightly smug hyper-criticism of one’s own country. Travel is supposed to widen your perspective, yes and noticing the cracks in your own backyard is natural (inevitable, even). But if travel only makes you resent where you come from (instead of helping you understand it more deeply), then you might not be traveling with the right lens. Or worse, you might just be importing superiority with your souvenirs.

Anyway, that’s a whole other post (and possibly a group therapy session).