Shouldn’t Travel be Fun?

A denunciation of sunrise tours

When I read Agnes Callard's New Yorker essay 'The Case Against Travel' I was in Iceland exhausted from jet lag and missing home. I had just finished what I can only call a grueling afternoon of tourism: driving around the Golden Circle and periodically jumping out of the car into the cold wet weather, trudging along with a slew of other tourists to appreciate the beauty of the attraction (read get a good photo) and then quickly returning to the vehicle. No one had forced me into this, but I didn’t want to “waste” a day of my trip resting. While I don't think Agnes got everything right in her essay, as I read it, I was struck by the fact that this was far from my first grueling afternoon of tourism. 

Travel is often considered a gateway to new experiences, personal growth, and increased sophistication. Many people travel as much as they can afford (whether limited by time or money). For upper-middle class people, spending 10% of their income and at least half of their vacation time on travel isn't rare. But despite the significant investment, and because of travel’s assumed benefits, many people barely evaluate the value of travel to them, reflexively using it to fill any chunk of unplanned time.

Here are some snippets from my travel experiences: 4am wake ups for sunrise tours to Angkor Wat and the Taj Mahal, taking the night bus from Seville to spend 10 hours in Lisbon so my travel partner could “get Portugal”, dutifully (but painfully) viewing every exhibit in random museums, trying pickled fish sandwiches in Hamburg that I know I wouldn't like (because we're here), learning local history which is at best mildly interesting and promptly forgotten, forcing myself to do things when exhausted or ill. As Agnes points out “If you are going to see something you neither value nor aspire to value, you are not doing much of anything besides locomoting.” She describes a lot of  travel as "locomotion all the way down" citing the average time Louvre visitors spend "admiring" the Mona Lisa (apparently 15 seconds) before moving on to the next check box - admittedly, I spent a similar amount of time “enjoying” the painting during a trip with a girlfriend. 

Now, I’ve had my share of fun and even awe-inspiring moments but we should acknowledge travel for what it is - a significant investment of money and energy in return for rare or novel experiences. This type of travel comes at the opportunity cost of pure relaxation, visiting loved ones far away, or spending time on hobbies or personal projects. That level of investment needs to be met with truly great experiences. Yet, it’s not uncommon to spend parts of a trip doing things you would never voluntarily do at home, just so you can say you did them.

That's not to say there aren't good reasons to travel. Traveling to fulfill desires you already have in ways you can't achieve locally is an obvious one. Activities like going skiing, drinking at great wineries, or seeing historical monuments from periods you have a deep interest in may easily be worth the related costs. When I was 14 my parents let me pick our vacation destination - I was obsessed with Egyptian history at the time and visiting the ancient monuments and seeing mummies in the Egyptian museum was immensely gratifying and exciting to me. This is often overstated, but the novelty inherent in travel can truly change your values, preferences and perspectives. For instance, immersing yourself with a host family in Guatemala to practice Spanish and understand local culture firsthand could genuinely open you up to a beneficial shift in perspective and a deeper understanding of other ways of living.

But, benefitting from novelty requires planning your trips in a way that allows you to be changed by your experiences. Rushing through the Louvre to get your 15 seconds with the Mona Lisa is unlikely to help you appreciate great art in the future. What those 15 seconds can get you is a selfie that lets everyone know you have the resources to go to Paris and the sophistication to care about seeing great art. I read Agnes’s piece as an argument against traveling primarily for the purpose of signaling to others and yourself. That people should do what they authentically want with their time, not what they think they ought to do to be well-rounded worldly people who like the right things and experience the right experiences.

I can almost visualize the avid traveler’s tirade in response to mine: “No, it’s not always fun in the moment. Travel is made up of adventures and novel experiences - the types of things that memories are made of.” Some people do in fact place disproportionate value on the remembering self rather than the experiencing self. And people claim to really enjoy their travels, especially the sort of people who travel a lot. Many feel they’ve been changed for the better by these experiences. Young backpackers on lengthy trips exemplify this belief (even though from the outside the only discernible change is to their personal style - can anyone explain why these people inevitably end up looking exactly like this?)

So why should I question their own assessment of their enjoyment and personal growth? Well for one thing, when you travel, you open yourself up to the risk of motivated reasoning. You’ve spent time and money and you want to feel like it was worth it. On top of the sunk cost, you want to be the type of person who appreciates the things that sophisticated people, (or deep people, or adventurous people) appreciate. But sometimes experiences are a letdown, even experiences you've paid for and which other people ostensibly value, and that's ok. Let's all stop pretending the sunrise Taj Mahal viewing was worth it. Would it have been worth it if you didn’t get any photos?

Travel is a means, not an end in itself. Going forward, I’m inclined to prioritize authentic enjoyment over popular must-dos, comfort over exhausting itineraries, and revisits to familiar, beloved places over the compulsion to constantly seek the new. I’m relieved to know that the days of dragging myself around a museum or waking up at 4am for a good photo are in the rearview mirror.