I once went on a week-long trip to Beijing only to realize I had forgotten to pack any bottoms. All I had was the pair of leggings I wore on the flight and a pair of warm stockings for a dress I had packed. Unfortunately for me, every shop I went into only carried Asian petite sizes, and I am anything but. So I wore the same pair of teal-green leggings and the stockings for the entire trip. Did I still have a great trip regardless? Yes. Did I do all the things I wanted to? Yes. Have I ever made this mistake again? No.
That trip to China didn’t look perfect. Still, it gave me everything I wanted from it. Travel these days is often all about aesthetics and perfectly curated trips, with “fit checks,” Instagram-worthy pictures, and a whole lot of editing. When you spend all that time fussing about your outfit, the perfect angle and the right vantage point, all for a couple of hundred likes on Instagram, are you really present and experiencing the place around you?
Don’t get me wrong, I love watching travel reels, especially the ones that look so beautiful they make you want to book the next flight out. My Instagram has lots of saved reels of hikes to do and places to eat at, and I get a lot of great ideas from them. They’ve also helped bring visibility to places people might never have discovered otherwise. A lot more people are traveling outside of their home country partly because of travel on social media. Yet what they fail to show are the early morning wake-up calls to get a shot without the crowds, the time spent waiting for your turn to click the perfect photo, or the need to carry multiple outfits and spend hours getting ready. That’s time that could have been spent actually seeing a place and getting to know it.
Over time, this kind of social-media-driven travel has led to everyone having nearly the same itinerary, clicking the same photos, going to the same Instagram spots, and eating the same meals, all in the name of checking things off a list. I have done this too. I’ve stood in line for the sandwich that everyone raved about, only to walk away underwhelmed.
Another side effect is that so many restaurants and cafes now curate their spaces to become Instagram hotspots. That might make for a good photo, but does the food actually match the hype? I have often found these places to be overcrowded, with poor service and average food.
Sometimes, I catch myself judging the over-curated style, and wonder how someone manages to have a different bag or pair of shoes every day. Where is the luggage space? How did you carry all of that across Europe on cobblestone roads? How much did you pay for extra baggage? Aren’t your legs hurting in those beautiful but clearly uncomfortable shoes? But then I remind myself that everyone travels differently.
While I would love to get some Instagram-worthy shots and have the perfect outfit, I don’t have the patience to spend that much time on it. I want my travels to have depth. I want to witness history, spend hours learning about a culture in museums, walk into the local restaurants, and absorb as much of that place as I can.
I need shoes that I can walk 20k steps in and still be comfortable. I need a practical bag that can fit everything I need and be pickpocket-proof. I need clothes that keep me warm or cool depending on the weather, so my focus stays on the place and not on myself. I don’t think I can enjoy a trip if I am performing. I would pick experience over aesthetics any day.
That doesn’t mean I don’t take photos. I want a good picture just as much as the next person. But if the perfect shot means waiting in line, count me out. The photos are not the goal. They are a snapshot of the place and my experience there. Sometimes I look at friends’ travel photos and feel envious of the perfect angle and outfit. But then I realize that probably meant less time to see everything else. And maybe for some, the photos are the goal, their primary reason for traveling.
I’ve made the error of packing impractical shoes on a trip because they looked good, only to regret it the rest of the journey, with aching feet and a constant sense of misery. Never again. As I grow older, I seek comfort. I need practicality. And more than anything, I want real experiences, not staged ones.
One of the reasons I didn’t share much of my travel on Instagram was because it didn’t look like the other curated content out there. I believed that if I didn’t have the perfect reel or those perfect shots, why would anyone care? I also felt that a photo or a reel could never fully capture the experience, the learning, the emotions a place leaves you with. Substack changed that for me. It gave me a space to share not just the photos, but the story, and the way a place made me feel. It has also introduced me to so many others sharing their real travel journeys. The messy, the chaotic, and the honest ones, and I am all for it!
Lately, I’ve been reading so many honest, thoughtful travel stories on Substack. A few that really stayed with me:
Thailand Highlights - Alex Laffey
Nobody Gives a Sh*t if You Travel - Caroline McCarley
On a Bus in Managua - Stephanie Mork
Dominos and Tea in Baku - Andrew L Brodsky
There are so many more, but these were a joy to read this week.
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I love the way you write. It's like someone is echoing my thoughts and is able to put into words what I am thinking.
Loved reading this! Everything here is so relatable.
I actually end up without perfect shots on so many of my trips and during the best moments possible.
And the fact about the Instagram famous cafés is on point. I was living in one of the most popular holiday locations in India - Goa for the last 4 years, and realised that it is always better to eat at the places which are less famous in social media. 😅
Also, thank you for the reading recommendations. Always on a lookout for fellow thoughtful travel storytellers.