I don't like traveling anymore

After 35, you don't like traveling but boy do you like 'Vacationing'.

Author is right, after you travel (and slum it a bit) you realize that after surface level cultural/food/history differences everyone kinda/sorta wants similar things in life and while people's life stories are interesting, you start noticing patterns.

OTOH, (Caveat:I don't have enough money for this) there is nothing that recharges you more than first class tickets somewhere beautiful and getting pampered in a resort. People (esp in their 20's) poo poo this. Rightly so, you should be experiencing the "real culture". But me, I've done that already, I'm gonna sit in the Four Seasons.

P.S: Another thing I'd suggest the author try is fitness trips! Big Hikes, marathons, surfing competitions? Nothing speedruns cultural competency like doing a really difficult thing somewhere new. Get Travel insurance.

I enjoy traveling a lot. Specifically traveling. Not arriving and staying somewhere, not vacationing, not sight seeing. Traveling has always been a fun experience to me. The road trip, the adventure part of a vacation. Spend a day or two to drive as far as possible, stop by places to rest and relax, then get back to it. Find an interesting road, where does that lead? People dismiss the adventure of traveling and just rush to the destination. Like quick travel in a game, if you walk to the destination, sometimes you find cool stuff, sometimes not, and sometimes you distract and detour so hard that you end up with a new destination instead. I don't consider flying to be traveling though, it's just flying to me, a rush of getting to a destination.

Your story made me feel less alone.

I used to love traveling too. I would go to many places, meet new people, try new foods, and see pretty things. It made me happy and helped me learn a lot.

But then, like you, I stayed home more. I moved to a small town. Life became slow but nice. I made new friends, grew plants, cooked food, and played games. I started to feel happy without going far.

I liked how you said, “the connection to people not being punctuated by an impending departure.” That means a lot. When we stay, we make deep friendships that last.

Maybe one day we will travel again. But right now, this calm, quiet life feels good. Maybe this is a new kind of adventure.

Thank you. You helped me understand my own feelings better.

There’s a weird gap in the modern world when it comes to travel, which is traveling as a group / society. In the distant past it was very common for entire societies to be nomadic. You’d have both your friends and family + movement around the globe.

On the other hand, the solo traveler is a recent phenomenon largely enabled by 20th century technology and political developments.

I know there are programs which travel the world as a group, but they tend to be very ends-focused (“startup travelers”) etc.

So, the era of time when the Earth had open, undefined spaces (“smooth space” as defined by the philosopher Deleuze) seems to be basically over forever, barring an apocalyptic event. We might have to wait for new planets to see nomadic societies existing again.

I’m not sure if it’s Covid or just entering my 30s, but both I and many of my friends have noticed a similar shift. We used to love the idea of traveling the world and meeting new people, and while we still do that to an extent, the excitement of backpacking around the globe and going to off-beat places isn't there anymore.

However, it doesn’t bother me. The idea of constant travel can feel a bit forced, because Western society emphasises it so much as a way to feel fulfilled. But, happiness and fulfillment exists in a thousand other things. Isaac Asimov, for example, spent most of his life in a New York apartment, writing articles, books, and letters. He loved it so much that the first thing he did after coming home from heart surgery was to rush towards his typewriter. He disliked being distracted from writing so much that he wasn't even willing to travel to Hollywood to get his novels adapted.

So, while travelling occasionally is enriching and helps me mentally, I am okay with the idea of just sitting at home and working on my projects, being excited about programming, writing, and learning.

I’ve grown older, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop traveling. There’s something enriching about setting out alone, discovering new places, and connecting with people but not just on the surface. Before I go somewhere, I take the time to learn about its history, its society, its ways. That way, when I meet someone, there’s a chance for real connection, not just polite small talk. Because if you only skim the surface, everything can seem familiar,sometimes even too Westernized once u look closer, the uniqueness reveals itself.

There’s also something powerful in returning to a place after many years. When you see how it’s changed, you might begin to understand how societies grow, shift, and evolve. And in doing so, you also begin to see your own world more clearly how it too has changed, often in ways you might not notice from inside your everyday bubble.

Different societies don’t just look different they understand the world differently. And sometimes that can be painful to confront. In Western cultures, individualism often makes it seem logical to live and work far from family, sometimes because your hometown couldn’t offer things. But maybe that wasn’t a failure of the system, maybe that was the system. One that only works when social bonds are weakened, everyones reflexes on human connection and personal sacrifice (grinding) is normalized.

Now, we live in a world where people struggle to understand how others think, vote, feel. A village in Uzbekistan, a town in Sicily, a city in the Midwest, or a neighborhood in New York they’re worlds apart, thats is very very obvious. I’ve been to many of these places, sometimes twice, and they’re not the same planet. And they’re drifting further apart.

But this isn’t new. The ancient Athenians were explorers, traders, thinkers, learners. They brought ideas home and reshaped their world. Yet, with time, even they began to say, "This is how it’s always been. Things are the same" They were resistant to understand the underlying mechanisms, as the world around them shifted. Their knowledge came through a lens that blinded them to the reasons of transformation. And eventually, their dominance faded suddenly and decisively driven by the same forces they could no longer truly understand.

It’s a pattern worth remembering. Because maybe, just maybe, we’re living through something similar today. Seeling the world is an enabler for effective introspection. I avoid the touristy places though, they feel like crowded movie sets.

Welcome, I hope you have a good time. You don't hear about Kazakhstan here every day, and rarely in a positive light.

If anyone else comes to Kazakhstan and wants to see "the real country", I'd humbly suggest looking outside the two largest cities because they're the only places that have seen any development over the past three decades. My city hasn't changed at all since the end of the 1980s, you look at the photographs from that era and the only difference you see are significantly increased numbers of cars. That's pretty typical.

If you ever wonder why some people have a nostalgia for the Soviet Union — that's why, all significant infrastructure was built back then and hasn't been touched since. The Chinese have been pouring some money into infrastructure for the past few years (mostly power plants and railroads), but the volume is incomparable with ye olde days since they are doing it across the globe and don't have infinite money.

Some of our "patriots" become aggressive when you mention this, so you might want to keep it in mind.

A commenter down below called us "a third-world country", and while that's silly (pretty much only because we're "second world" by definition), it's only fair.

There’s this sort of malaise that took over when Bourdain died which burst the idea that travel was in some way healing or reparative. It can be, but it can also widen the gap between you and the world.

For me what I got out of travel was just being able to experience the “normalcy” of other countries, peoples, cultures. There was this romantic notion that I’d learn something really important about humanity or my place on the earth - all those thoughts in some way seem to exist on a more “conceptual” emotional depth, where you are experiencing and touring, rather than participating. Staying places allows more time for depth than going with the idea that you’ll be moving on.

The whole “digital nomad” trend, while like in a way laudable as a truly neat that it’s possible effect of globalization, still carries a sort of colonial, exchange-rate-maxxing exploitative vibe. It’s playing rich, in a way.

Still, it’s a big world, and it’s good if you can to experience some of it.

Some of this is "with age comes wisdom" but some of this is ageless. I travelled extensively for work before covid for over 20 years and thought I'd welcome it back post covid but I now find it a mixed blessing. Perhaps I'm half way down the ladder the OP has climbed off.

I love traveling, but rarely alone, and always with a purpose. I find aimless traveling just for the sake of saying I've been somewhere more exhausting than exhilarating. If I'm going to the Netherlands it's to visit some ancestral villages. If I'm going to Japan it's because I have a deep fascination with Kabuki and Noh. But I too love having a place to call home, with people in my community who are familiar with me.

It helps to look at where & why the author has settled: thanks to tech like Zoom (that really came into its own around Covid) one can be physically settled in a place and also participate in global markets and global conversations.

Good for fomo and good for anyone looking to design a life; why not live in a place that enriches your body! Wherever you live, you can now find work that connects and enriches your mind. Your designed life provides so much of what you seek from travel but also community: getting to say hello to the same people each day for years.

My traveling taught me that people are the same everywhere, but now that I know that, I no longer want to to travel just travel.

It’s more of a reminder of that