Is Traveling Still Worth It?

After almost 35 years of travelling, I am beginning to ask a different question. Not simply “Where next?” but “What sort of journey do I actually want now?” Planes, trains and tuk-tuks still appeal. Being moved through a crowded attraction like toothpaste through a tube has rather less charm.

Vietnam and Cambodia gave us plenty worth remembering: Ninh Binh’s scenery, food stops, temples and small encounters along the way. I had not lost interest in the world. I was noticing that some ways of travelling no longer suited me particularly well.

Not Every Holiday Needs a Full Programme

The earlier reflection on travel dreams and reality was partly about physical limits and the gap between anticipation and experience. This one is more about what I choose to spend my attention on.

Crowds can make an extraordinary place hard to enjoy. So can the feeling that I must keep moving because there is another important sight waiting. The solution is not always a more elaborate plan. Sometimes it is crossing something off the list before leaving home, rather than once I am too tired to appreciate it.

The Photograph Is Not the Whole Visit

I take plenty of photographs myself, so this is hardly a complaint from someone who travels without a camera. What wears me down is the contest for one particular angle: tripods occupying a space, queues waiting for a pose and everyone else reduced to an obstacle. A place can be worth visiting even when my picture of it will not look unique.

The same applies to religious sites. Local expectations about clothing and behaviour deserve attention whether or not they suit the photograph someone had in mind. This is about respecting the setting, rather than judging how people dress somewhere else.

In Salzburg, a large tour group once crowded me off the pavement as it followed its guide. It was frustrating, but the relevant problem was the group’s behaviour and lack of space—not the nationality of its members. A crowded pavement is quite enough of a subject without making the people on it stand for international politics.

Remembering the Good Days Without Owning Them

I remember Sigiriya at sunrise with only two other people nearby, quieter walks in Prague and beaches where the waves were the main sound. Those are precious memories. They do not give me a special claim to the places or mean that later visitors have less right to be there.

I was fortunate to experience those moments. I can keep them without expecting every return visit to reproduce them. My preferences have changed, and the world has continued changing too.

A Different Kind of “Next”

Future trips may be slower, shorter or less full. I might return somewhere familiar because I enjoy being there, rather than go somewhere new because it remains on a list. I can also pause without treating a month at home as a gap in my identity.

The journeys already made still give me stories to think about and share. Travel does not stop mattering when I stop arranging the next departure.

I am not retiring the suitcase. I am becoming more selective about what makes it worth packing. It has had a good deal of practice; it can cope with a little waiting.