I Don’t Travel for the Views — I Travel for This

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2 min 53 sec read

I don't travel internationally because the beaches are better or the hotels are nicer or the flights are a good deal.

I travel internationally because it makes me uncomfortable.

And I think that discomfort is the entire point.

Roughly 40% of Americans have never owned a passport. The ones who do mostly use it for the Caribbean, Mexico, or Canada.

Nothing wrong with those places. But if every international trip still feels like home with better weather, you're not really going anywhere.

I travel to places where I can't read the menu. Where I don't know how the subway works. Where the money looks different and the coffee tastes different and the whole rhythm of daily life is just slightly off from everything I'm used to.

That feeling of being slightly lost is not a problem to solve. It's the reason to go.

It comes down to four things. None of them are about the destination.

1. It forces you out of your comfort zone.

At home, everything is optimized. You know which route avoids traffic. You know exactly what to order at your regular spot. Your entire life is a series of solved problems.

Travel undoes all of that. You're a beginner again. And that reminds you that you're capable of navigating uncertainty. Most people forget that about themselves somewhere between their 30s and their mortgage.

2. You meet people who are nothing like you.

The most interesting conversation I've ever had was with a guy at a bar in Tokyo who spoke about 40% of the English I needed him to. We figured it out anyway. He told me about his daughter's school. I told him about growing up in Ohio. We laughed at things that probably weren't that funny because the effort of communicating made everything feel more important.

You don't get that at an all-inclusive. You get it when you sit down somewhere unfamiliar and stay long enough for a real interaction to happen.

3. New places rewire how you see your own.

I watched a family in Lake Como eat dinner at 9:30 on a Wednesday. Three generations at the table. A bottle of wine. Kids running between courses. Nobody in a hurry. Nobody checking a phone. And I thought, when did we decide that eating fast and eating alone was normal?

I walked through a park in Bern on a Sunday morning and every single person was outside. Walking. Sitting. Playing soccer. Living at a pace that felt almost radical compared to home.

Travel doesn't just show you new places. It shows you what your own place is missing.

4. Culture isn't something you read about. It's something you walk through.

You can watch a documentary about Japanese precision and work ethic. Or you can stand in a train station in Tokyo and watch a cleaning crew bow to an empty bullet train before boarding. Respect for craft is embedded in everything there, even the stuff nobody sees.

You can read about the Irish pub tradition. Or you can sit in one in Belfast on a Tuesday night and realize that the music isn't a show for tourists. It's just what people do here. They play because their parents played and their parents played before them. And nobody is filming it.

Culture is absorbed by being there. Not by reading about it. Not by watching a reel. By standing in it.

Anthony Bourdain said it better than anyone: travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. But it changes you.

I'd add one thing. It doesn't just change you. It returns you to yourself. The curious, alert, paying-attention version that existed before everything became routine.

That version is probably in a country you've never been to. Go find them.

Adventures led by women, designed to make a difference.

Peru, Bhutan and Cambodia. That’s where Intrepid, the world’s largest adventure travel company, has launched three new Women’s Expeditions.

These small-group trips are designed exclusively for women, creating space to connect, explore and support local women-led businesses along the way.

Trek the lesser-known Chinchero to Urquillos route in the Peruvian Andes with an all-female crew. Discover Cambodia’s street food scene on a women-run tuk tuk tour. Unwind with a traditional herbal hot stone bath at a women-owned farmhouse in Bhutan.

Every trip is led by an expert female guide and built around meaningful, immersive experiences.

Explore Women’s Expeditions

Know someone who keeps saying "we should travel more" but never books the trip? Forward this to them.

From the archives:

The Italian coffee rule that changed my mornings -- Small cultural differences that reveal big truths about how we live.

Scenes from a guest book -- Traces of travelers who came before.

The couple who reminded me why I fly -- There I was, nose in a book, when I heard a gasp from the window seat.

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Until next Thursday,

Jeff