Travel Today… UGH. :(

Needless to say, I received a bit of push-back on my comments (along with a kindred few 👍s and ❤️s – no doubt from likewise ol’ fogey veteran travelers like me). But in any case, just a small sample of the adventurous (not), serendipitous (not) style of travel that seems to be woefully lacking among “travelers” these days.

g-knows I love technology  as much as the next guy. Indeed, I’m arguably a good bit more tech-savy than most dodderin’s my age (I once designed and built hand-coded websites professionally – none of this “Squarespace”, “Wix”, etc. cookie-cutter template stuff).

And I most surely embrace many of the apps that help me when I’m on the trail – aiding me in noodling out stray currency exchange rates, detailing my daily spending as I hop from bahts to dong to yen. And thank goodness for my beloved Maps.me to navigate back to my riad in Morocco – purely offline (i.e. NOT connected to no internet juice, thankyouverymuch!)

BUT… where do we draw the line with all this connectivity? I mean, just look around – be it in your hometown or some exotic foreign city that you dropped a boatload of $$$$ to fly to. Verily everywhere, everyone is near CONTSTANTLY head-down, staring at their smartphone.

That plus… the proliferation of packaged “GetYourGuide” and Viator tours in most every corner of the Planet. Every blessed minute of your itinerary pre-booked before the wheels of your plane even touch the tarmac in the exotic foreign country that you dreamed about since you first opened a yellow National Geographic as a kid (does NG even sell wood pulp monthly magazines anymore?)

Just you and your precious Nuvi – all sealed up for “exploring” a new foreign land…

And then there is (as she continues to rant..) the many who fly to some new foreign country, and… insist upon renting a car, else hire a private driver to get themselves from place to place. Many claim that they need their own car/driver to reach stray corners that are (allegedly) not available via the public transport system.

Really? Gotta wonder how the locals manage to get around via buses and trains on a daily basis, um… just fine. My point is – such a shame the precious local interactions you miss by being sealed-up in a private vehicle all the time. Oh wait – I guess such “travelers” aren’t interested in such – they only want to snap a quick selfie (for the “Gram”), check-off each spot on the online list of “Best sights to see in <insert most any stray corner of the globe here>” and move swiftly on to the next one. I mean, most the locals don’t speak English after all – so best to avoid them and focus exclusively on the tourist attractions.

Me? My entire raison d’etre for traveling to a new foreign land at all is – and always has been – primarily to mingle with the locals and glean a small measure of their culture and what makes theirs different from mine. Indeed, many of my most memorable travel experiences have been aboard a rickety (though just as often spiffy/very comfy) public bus/train/ferry in the countries I’ve visited. Yes, yes, I enjoyed gazing at the Giza pyramids with my own two eyes, and marveling at Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) in the (otherwise g-forsaken) outback of Oz, not to mention wading across jungle streams and muddy mountain slopes in Uganda to gawk, spellbound at those wild “Gorillas in the Mist”.

Ya don’t meet amazing folk like this whence sealed in your very own personal rental car…

But trust that all of those thrills pale compared to the amazing experiences I’ve had meeting locals on public buses, being invited into their humble homes for tea, to a local wedding, etc. I dare say – NONE of that can be had by pre-booking an online “Skip the Line” tour.

Case in point: Sure. Youbetcha. Gazing at miles of “sakura” cherry blossoms in Osaka, Japan was surely a major bucket-list treat (not to mention my 50th country), but the truth is – it was this trio of local Japanese ladies the kindly guided me there that I most fondly remember. —>

True, True – Lots of Different Travel “Styles”

Yes, yes – I’m well aware that there is a wide variety of travel “styles”. That’s always been the case. Those who seek to be pampered for their preciously short annual vacation from their otherwise grueling work lives. And of course not everyone is keen on rubbing elbows with the most humble of strangers babbling in a foreign tongue (leastwise not unless that stranger is… serving you Jamaican jerk tacos on the patio of your gated Sandals resort…)

I get it.

And she only had to travel 8,965 miles to get this shot…

But my beef is… Why on earth fly to the other side of the Planet simply to snap a boatload of selfies (at the precise same colorful spot in Sri Lanka as every “influencer” w/ an IG account), and seek out “…cool patios/cafés” and “…holistic healing/massage/yoga/etc.” retreats?

I mean, surely there’s plenty of “health food stores” and “holistic healing” joints in southern Cal where you could get yourself a jim-dandy massage. Why spend 16+ hours cramped on a plane enroute to India – only to seek out once you land – what you can have at a strip mall in your own hometown?

Seriously. Is this what my life-long beloved passion for exploring the globe has come to?

“…exploring…” indeed.

Surely travelers today aren’t “exploring” at all. I mean, what ever happened to just landing in some far-off foreign land, and wandering around with verily no agenda whatsoever? No advance… hotel room (along w/ a pre-arranged airport transfer of course) waiting for you as you exit customs. No tour bus idling just outside your group buffet breakfast the next morning – all gassed up and ready to whiz you ’round the well-worn “circuit” of “Top 10 sites to see in Xxx…”.

Honestly. My (admittedly protracted) rant here today isn’t so much judging how you or the next guy “travels” – but rather…

Feeling sincerely SAD that so many are missing out on experiencing the amazing travel serendipity that I’ve enjoyed over the years. Truly “exploring” ever new lands, and meeting the folks that live there – all without being perpetually CONNECTED every blessed moment.

Sad, yes. But also dismayed and more than a little depressed here. I mean, while my own recent 6 week skip through top-to-bottom Italy proved happily speckled with my ever earnest thirst for serendipity, the truth is – it was a struggle.

Going against my penchant for “free-wheeling” travel style, I had no choice but to pre-book every one of my (no fewer than 13!) hotels (this, even in the “off-season”!) And while I at least left most every day for utter whim – nonetheless, with the uber-increased masses of tourists snapping up every room months in advance, I had no choice but to likewise nail-down my sleeps each night for the full 6 weeks that I skipped from Barcelona, to Venice, to Bologna, to Cinque Terra, to Puglia, to Sicily.

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