You’ve just checked into your Airbnb after a ten-hour flight. You’re exhausted, disoriented, and instead of stepping out to wander the unfamiliar streets, you log into Netflix and put on your comfort sitcom. The same one you watch at home. The same characters. The same language. The same cultural bubble, just in a different time zone.
Travel has never been easier. Budget airlines, Google Flights alerts for the cheapest deals, remote work, TikTok itineraries titled “48 Hours in…”. But somewhere between the boarding pass and the Instagram carousel, something has shifted. Travel is more accessible, but perhaps we’ve become less immersed and are travelling inauthentically.
Technology has transformed the way we move through the world. With Google Maps in our pockets, Google Translate on standby, and restaurant recommendations curated by strangers online, we are never truly lost. And that’s exactly my issue, because getting lost used to be the whole point.
There was a time when travel demanded vulnerability. You had to ask a local for directions, mispronounced street names, ended up in neighbourhoods not featured in guidebooks, and stumbled across family-run restaurants because you were hungry, not because they had 4.8 stars and a Pinterest-tiled wall. Now, TikTok tells us where to go before we even arrive. Pinterest cafés are pinned weeks in advance. We land in a new city already knowing the “hidden gems.” But if everyone knows about them, are they hidden at all?
I believe that there’s a romance in not knowing. Whether wandering until your feet hurt and your phone battery dies, or sitting in a park because you’re not sure what else to do, getting lost forces us to be present in the moment.
The irony is that travel, a once deeply personal act of discovery, is becoming a communal spectacle for those back home. When we’re preoccupied with capturing the best photo, we risk missing the subtle transformations that travel can offer: the quiet self-reflection, the confrontation with cultural differences, the re-evaluation of what life feels like back at home.
One of my favourite travel YouTubers, Damon Dominique, runs a business called “Shut Up and Go” that promotes authentic and meaningful travel opportunities. His newsletter promotes apartment swaps in Berlin and cat-sitting in Mexico.
While I wish that I could go back to a pre-Internet world, it’s impossible and pointless to romanticise a past where travel was less accessible but often more exclusive. But this accessibility does not guarantee depth of our travel, and to truly immerse ourselves, it’s about letting yourself get lost once you arrive.