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I love "backpacking". I have done many long trips to rather unusual parts of the world, almost always alone and "unguided". But lately I can't shake the feeling that it is becoming very difficult to find "real" information sources. With real I mean sources that will not shy away from saying it plainly when a city or area is shitty, ugly, not worth visiting, tourist trap etc but also will go out of its way to explore the unusual even when it is not always savory and entirely safe.
The typical guide books are just contend with giving a dispassionate list of every somewhat touristic part of the country, trying to be inoffensive as possible. I sometimes pirate the old Lonely Planets and the difference is day and night. If I buy a guide book it is because I want to be told the "insider" info which will be missing from the tourist office website. What use is it to produce a print version of everything I could find on google maps anyway?
Same goes for blogs. Perhaps this is more of an SEO issue but I used to be able to dig up plenty of amateur travel blogs or even forums full of people giving their unfiltered opinions and experiences. Now it is nigh impossible to sift through the "10 TOP EXPERIENCES" lists all regurgitating the same bullshit. Reddit is not a good replacement here, and Facebook backpacker groups are typically too inactive. I almost feel some nostalgia scrolling through some regional backpacker groups I used to be active in. They were great places to get up-to-date information and meet people. Now they are just dead. TripAdvisor and its forums are totally not a replacement here either. Why does every basic source about every random Colombian city keep going on about some graffiti street but not say a word about best clubs to dance with local girls? Is anyone actually going to these places for shitty graffiti?
But what is the culture war angle here? It is slight but I get the sense that the root cause of all this is the extreme global connectedness/homogeneity and disappearance of even the possibility of an adventure no matter how small. I can't escape the feeling that such "insider info" venues have disappeared because there is no demand for insider info anymore. Every remotely pretty place in the World has either already become dotted with a tourism infrastructure neatly exposed by airbnb/booking/tripadvisor/skyscanner/tinder or rapidly on its way. You can count on the locals drinking the same beverages, eating the same food, watching the same TV, dressing up in same fashion trends and living in same houses as you do. And if there is still a gritty or untamed side to it, it is considered almost rude to mention this. As if you are insulting the locals, as if you owe it to them to herd every foreigner to a couple carefully curated quarter away from anything interesting.
But then I have to wonder, what is even the point of traveling then? Were the decades between 1960s-2010s just a fluke or a transition period when most of the world became somewhat accessible through infrastructure development but did not assimilate into mundane sameness so completely yet? When you didn't need to be Lawrence of Arabia to see the world but it still took some self-selection of the risk taker personality? Should one consign oneself to using vacation time for skiing at resorts and hikes at well marked well frequented paths and just give up on the joy of discovering something genuinely foreign?
I realize fully that I am very incoherent. Perhaps I am just getting older and struggling to face up to the reality that I cannot just go to some forgotten part of the world with a return ticket two months later and "figure it out". I have responsibilities, vacation time is valuable, I can exchange money for convenience. I am writing this mostly to try to organize my thoughts and figure out if it is me that changed or the world.
P.S. please share with me if you know of any forums, bloggers, authors, publishers, youtubers honestly whatever that would prove me wrong and show adventure is alive and well at least somewhere. I really enjoy reading stuff like this
This isn't new:
James Taylor, Slapleather, 1991
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If you’re rich, Bhutan is still very good. There’s a $200 / person / day tourist tax, which keeps the riffraff out, and the government largely limits construction of lodging to well-established global 5* brands like Aman and Six Senses. They’re, in turn, forced to hire local guides (who are actually very competent, ime).
Civilization is creeping in, so you probably only have 5-10 years left, but the ruling class are keenly aware that preserving a certain charming pastiche backwardness (while also being very safe, clean and welcoming) is the future of the economy, and they act accordingly. It’s also a lot of fun to be in a Buddhist country that hasn’t yet been turned into a strip mall like the more developed parts of the rest of Southeast Asia.
Nice tip! Not yet rich but planning to be doing much better soon and enjoy DINK life for a couple years before kids. Gonna definitely check it out.
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Looks like a really interesting place and it should be right up my alley as a yogi. But dang, that's a hefty fee when accommodation and every other expense comes on top. Also, getting to Bhutan would be a pain due to needing at least 2-3 flights from where I live. Sigh.
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The rulers also decided that cryptocurrency is the future, and heavily invested in crypto mining.
Quietly, but infrastructure of such magnitude is not something that can be hidden. Something for people who worry how easily you can get away with AI development in coming Katechon Pact world.
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You might like Shiey. Lots of urban exploration, train hopping, and other such kinds of adventures, mostly in central and eastern Europe.
That looks extremely dangerous, illegal and somewhat staged for social media sometimes. But still love me some post-industrial landscapes.
Definitely, I would certainly not recommend to anyone to do the kind of stuff that Shiey does unless they have his kind of skills. And probably not even if they do.
I think that for him, that is probably part of the point. Hence he calls his video series "Illegal Freedom".
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There are a couple of aspects to this. Certainly there is some element of globalization making people everywhere who are plugged into international culture more or less the same, and the longer the internet exists the more it will cater to the lowest common denominator (Eternal September never ends). Many people who travel nowadays are doing it just for instagram photos or a quick story, and not to be challenged or to learn anything meaningful about the world.
Any place that is beautiful, fun, and accessible is going to become a tourist trap nowadays, so for a place to not be one either some of those things must not be present (say some mountain village in Bhutan that is hard to get to and where nobody speaks English) or there must be extenuating circimstances (right after the end of covid lockdowns was a great time to travel, mask mandates aside, as is, forgive me for saying, a normally nice city where there has been a recent terrorist attack or some similar tragedy and all the famous locations are empty e.g. Paris right after the Bataclan attacks).
To get some firsthand knowledge, it's best to build relationships with individuals who have that experience, and what do you know, this just might the place. I'd wager we have Mottizens who are from or have been to many of the places you'd like to visit, and we have had many threads in the past either seeking similar advice as you, or offering reflections on what various obscure corners of the world are like.
My "method" for more grounded traveling was learning basics of the language, and then hitchhiking and dating trying to be very open-minded about invitations. That doesn't work since I am not single anymore and have a full-time job with limited vacation days..
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The culture angle here is the totalizing force of global capital and you. If you end up at exclusively touristy places, simply stop being a tourist.
I also travel every year, I also only take one 40l back pack, and I don't have near your level of problems because I split my trips between touristy shrines and natural sites and such, and just wandering around places and browsing satellite imagery for interesting looking shit. Eg, if you are going to Vietnam for carsts and shit, look at the googlemaps photos and avoid the area where you can see 100000 signs in english.
The other side: you are looking for authenticity that doesn't exist and never existed. There are places and people, and those people live and work in those places as component parts of the same globalized system. Everything is one thing, and everything is the same. It's dollars all the way down and has been ever since the berlin wall got blowed-up.
Traditional application of the traditional saying: If you are bored, it could be that you are boring.
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Didn't travellers used to rely on striking up a conversation with the locals and asking where the best spots were? "Where can I find the best party?" is a question that might be hard to find an answer for online but should be easy if you're talking to someone at a bar.
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I still (as of 2016, when we had kids and stopped travelling adventurously) find it remarkably easy to get away from the tourist traps - just throw the guidebook away and go for a wander! There are a few places (like Venice and Florence) where the whole core city is now a tourist trap, but even somewhere like Granada you only need to get half a mile away from the Alhambra before hanging out with the students becomes more interesting than acting like a tourist. (I suspect this relies on you being young enough and having a good grounding in the local language). Places can also acquire a reputation for being dangerous that keeps the tourists away despite the actual crime levels being lower than most US cities - Naples (the city proper - not Pompeii/Ercolano/the Amalfi Coast) felt mostly tourist-free, and also safe to someone who grew up in south-east London.
The other problem, that a quick random sample of local culture will probably find locals imitating London/LA/NYC badly, is harder to fix. Hanging out with students is basically the same experience anywhere in the Christian or post-Christian world - only the architecture and the weather change from city to city. And if you speak to someone in thickly-accented, broken <local language> the response almost always comes back in thickly-accented, broken English. It may be boring, but it is victory.
This doesn't match my experience at all. Naples is full of crowds of tourists. Lots of locals too, but also lots of tourists.
That said, there's still cultural sites worth seeing even if they are suffering from success.
I was just in Naples. I agree. There are hoards of tourists. Absolute hoards. Unfortunately, I also don't think there is much worth seeing, at least compared to other places in Italy. It was, however, very um... unique.
Put it down as "Type 2 fun" maybe. While you won't actually enjoy any of the time you spend in Naples, maybe it's worth seeing just for the crowds, the trash, the obnoxious motor bikes, and how everyone you interact with tries to scam you just a little. Three days of boredom, annoyance, and squalor. A lifetime of stories!
Pompeii and the archeological museum are definitely worth a look. The castle and museum on the hill are also not bad. The way down from the hill is possibly the quietest part of the whole city. Most people take the funicular and motorcycles can't navigate the steps so it's just you, a small number of locals, and a few cats.
The pizza is also pretty tasty despite being very popular among tourists.
Overall I think it's worth a visit if only to see the sheer chaos that those people live in.
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Possibly the way search engines changes thing is that now if you say a city is bad everyone from that city can share it on social media and yell at you? Celebrities have a weird code now we're they basically never say anything non-positive about other celebrities because they know if they do it will cause a minor social media flare up and they have to decide if it's worth it rathr than just venting.
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Homogenisation is real and I do think it's a shame for the traveler but I can't get too mad because unfortunately it does seem to be something generally attendant to prosperity. This is especially true of poorer countries, and it would feel a bit wierd to moan about the rest of the world being insufficiently varied for my leisure pursuit.
I don’t agree with this. Homogenisation is a side of integrating into the global market economy. However a lot of countries achieved this integration without getting richer and better off. I have travelled in plenty of poor but modernised places and plenty of poor but not so modernised places. It was very clear for me that the people generally had a nicer life in the second ones.
What are some examples?
Most of Africa, Latin America, Arab countries without infinite oil. Iran. Afghanistan. Don't know that much about Asia. Even much of Turkey is in this category in a way even though we are somewhat wealthier. Many of these places uprooted the poor, parochial but somewhat functional traditional lifestyle of their populations in a quest of modernization and industry. Tens of millions flowing into massive and honestly horrible cities as cheap labour force. The expectation was that industry would make everyone better off eventually, and these transitionary problems would be resolved through wealth. Just like in Europe.
However this obviously failed and many of these countries are actually actively de-industrializing for decades. Their connection with the global market economy turned into acting as resource extraction centers and cheap low quality immigrant labour breeders. They are dependent on commodity price super cycles, IMF loans, remittances, tourism and bare minimum of low efficiency industry for items difficult to import from China. Politics are at a total mess as the pie doesn't grow and the only way to lead a good life is to leech off the society somehow. All the millions who left poor but resilient lives in the country with strong traditional communities, honest labour, security, clean water and local food sources are now leading poor anonymous lives within crumbling city neighborhoods rife with crime and drugs, pollution, water you would rather not even brush your teeth with, and have to feed themselves with cheapest shittiest industrially convenient diets (sugar and grains). There are very few good jobs typically only in extractive industries such as mining or drilling if you aren't well-connected. The political elites have resigned themselves to steal as much as possible and send their kids to the first world.
P.S. I am not idealizing the traditional country life by the way. It was also quite suboptimal in many ways and people left for a reason, often voluntarily. I am simply saying that the replacement hasn't left these societies much better off.
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Seems to me like locals might not want to live in an environment you consider "interesting" or "unique." The US was full of dangerous, dirty cities and poor farms in 1900. Then after WW2 everyone who could afford to moved to the clean and safe (ish) but absolutely boring, sterile, repetitive suburbs that no tourist would ever want to visit. Partly this was due to top-down changes that other places have the capability to avoid, but people would like to be rich, and with that comes convenience, safety, etc. (Both because those things cost money, and because your time is more valuable and dying is worse when you're reach).
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I don't have the same experience of actual travelling becoming less interesting, but that's possibly because my method is rather scattershot. I don't care if one obscure village is actually the Best To Visit: if I am in the right mindset and I talk to local people, it will be fascinating for me. YMMV, especially if you're more interested in finding Big History or Amazing Experiences when you travel.
As for travel guides becoming less interesting, I suspect that this is a mix of safetyism, junk content on the internet/the decline of search engines, and to a lesser extent an unwillingness to call a shithole a "shithole".
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Feel like lockdowns/COVID meant there was a 2-or-so-year gap in a lot of travel content as well, along with generally encouraging homogenization as a phenomenon.
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You just explained why. No need for further explanation.
Sure but this is why google doesn’t give good hits. But the amateur spirit stuff still should be around somewhere right?
My favourite travel vlogger ever is c90adventures. It’s an English guy who started a youtube channel 10 something years ago for riding a Honda c90 moped through half the Asia and Europe. He is filming with a handheld camera on the motorbike so the content is hilariously low quality and he has like 10 mins of footage per country but it’s an absolute delight to watch. So unfiltered and humane.
Seriously check this out https://youtube.com/watch?v=mPne-q4ynts
He is still doing some travel content. This time with proper motor gear and a gopro but the fun and casualness is still there.
The issue is, I like watching travel youtube and seek out nice channels constantly but I have spent years doing so without coming across this channel. It was only when I was looking for some motorbiking videos someone on Reddit half jokingly recommended this and so I came across.
So I suspect there is still a lot of authentic content out there. Just not sure how to find it.
I can’t believe you shared that c90 video! It’s one of my all time favorite videos on YT. I spent 3 months in india and that video pretty much sums it all up. In a very positive way I might add. India really is something else. You should go if you haven’t been there. It’s in my top 3.
My ex-girlfriend had lived in India for a year so I heard a lot of stories. Even as a brown complexion short Kurdish gal she was apparently approached ALL THE TIME. Like almost every 10 minutes every time she was outside. Sounded like an exhausting experience. But I definitely want to see it at least once. Any suggestions for interesting parts? My biggest fear is to go to India for a couple weeks and spend the whole time shitting my guts out with heavy diarrhea.
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Tell me globohomo ruins travel without saying globohomo.
If skiing is an interest I've found the https://snowheads.com/ forum to be very useful especially for Europe.
People are reluctant to come across as racists by posting the unvarnished and full truth about various Third World places being utterly shitty.
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Globohomo is the derogatory name for universal culture ("globa"lized "homo"geneous culture).
From urban dictionary:
Globalhomo needs a rebrand. It's a powerful concept, but if you say "homo" most people will malfunction.
Help me out. Here's what I've got so far. All terrible.
*Cultural grey goo
*The samesies
*Corporate Memphis
*Instasame
*The Beige
*Coastal bland
The implicit associations of the "homo" are intentional. It doesn't just conjure ideas of cultural homogenization, but of specifically Left-coded cultural homogenization. It's sort of like the (now very dated) slander "fake and gay." And the word "globohomo" smacks of 4channer slang. Its prickly, yet unstated, associations should be embraced.
I think it is. Ore than just left coded culture. It is suggesting a culture that is contrary to how a normal person wants to live. Most men want to bang chicks; not suck dicks.
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Flatworld
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I see this as a feature not a bug.
Also there are both meanings of homo in the outcomes of globohomo.
I too enjoy malfunctioning people -- "IT'S SHORT FOR 'HOMOGENIZATION, BIGOT"...
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I like Corporate Memphis, I think that is an excellent double entendre in this context
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I call it the Unculture. This originally came from an article about culture shock in the launch issue of Monocle magazine (incidentally an utterly Unculture rag) which complained about the "global unculture of international chain hotels and airport business lounges". It works because the people who live in the Unculture believe (falsely) that they don't have a culture (which they express as "white people don't have culture") because they see "culture" as funky ethnic foods and costumes, not Shakespeare/Rembrandt/Mozart/etc. My wife also sees it is a pun on the Culture in Iain M Banks' Culture novels, which was intended as a techno-utopia but reads as a dystopia to people who don't live in the Unculture.
On this site, the most usual term is "Blue Tribe" per Scott Alexander's I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup, but that only really works in the US culture, and globohomo/Unculture is (as it's name suggests) global
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I think getting some listeners to malfunction is intended.
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Globohomo is a pithy shortening of "Global Homogenization", in other words:
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Thanks! Learned how to ski as a kid but haven’t done for years. I will pick it up again soon. Same with surfing. I like that it gives you a reason to find remote beaches and stick around for weeks just enjoying the area. Perhaps I will ditch backpacking and just accept this is what travelling means now.
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Try the developing world. India, Philippines, Laos. And get out of the capitals. I hear Africa is still pretty wild.
I think your thesis is largely correct. I used to to travel for work extensively before Covid and was noticing the same thing. There are still parts of the world that are not completely homogenized, but their days are numbered. This might be your last chance if it’s not already gone.
I knew it was final call when I met a Bulgarian hipster that was indistinguishable from my local variety 5 miles away.
India is a great call out.
People speak English, generally safer than than the crazy parts of Africa, and the locals will be more than happy to give you the real down low.
I genuinely find more diversity in my own country when travelling across states, than I do when travelling across the western world.
The 2 best locations to backpack are :
Western Ghats - Go at the end of the wet season. Beautiful rainforests that remind me most of hiking in Hawaii or Puerto Rico. Is well settled, and you will pass through some relatively-untouched ancient ruins as your pass through smaller settlements. One of the safest, cleanest and wealthiest parts of India. You will walk through a lot of tea-plantations and orchards. Some of the best food in the country and unquestionably the best fruits in the entire world.
Himalayan foothills - No, I do not mean the HIMALAYAS. The foothills are much more fun to backpack through. They are safe, well settled and the pahari/nepali people are some of the most humble and welcoming people you'll meet. Himachal, Uttarakhand & Nepal are the best places for this. Lots of interesting dairy & red-meat-based items and soup based dishes. The food is surprisingly simple & mild by Indian standards, no less flavorful. Heartiest meals you'll have. The best cheese I've had in my life was here (Kalari), and you can't find it in their own regional capitals, let alone anywhere else in India or the world. Spring here is like Switzerland on steroids.
Don't they have literal man-eating tigers there? Maybe tigers are less of a threat to "alone and unguided" backpackers than I am imagining, but this brings up a general problem with international travel beyond "touristy" places. Most people have no idea what the local dangers are in places they have never spent significant time in. In the Southeast United States, people know not to let small children or pets wander around the water's edge unattended. Tourists from other states don't have these instincts. People who grew up in India probably have an innate "common sense" understanding of how to not get eaten by tigers. OP almost certainly does not.
Absolutely correct. This is where I was trying to get to when I was complaining how it is difficult to find good critical information. Fuck TOP 10 EXPERIENCES I want to know if the area has tigers/alligators/cartels/spider that instantly kills you/guerrilla groups.
It is a fun story to tell now, but I was pissed off big time at the time when I hitched up a mountain village in Central Colombia to see some interesting ruins and turned out the local guerrilla group decided to blockade the whole area for a week, blow up the power lines and threaten to attack any vehicle so nobody dared to drive around the whole time.
I would have definitely preferred any of the internet/book sources I checked to give some honest info so I would at least be prepared for potential problems lol
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Man-eating tigers is in the Sundarbans in the north-east. But it is a good thing to mention either way.
There are tiger preserves in the western ghats, but those are easy to spot on the map and avoid. It is near impossible to run into a tiger outside a tiger preserve in the ghats. Some forests have Leopards, but Leopards do not attack adult humans, so you should be fine. It is like hiking in Yellowstone or Glacier national park. Don't fuck with the Bears. 99% the bears/tiger/leopards won't fuck back.
India doesn't have trail systems like the US, and the western ghats are rain-forests otherwise. So backpacking in the western ghats, means going from village to village using routes that used by humans, bullock carts, farmers and motorbikes. These are well occupied lands, and you'll see the occasional person as you traverse through people's fields, orchards and occasional well-travelled jungle routes. Wild animals steer clear of these areas, they they'd rather avoid humans if possible.
Agreed
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I missed a trip to Bhutan that I really regret. Doubt I’ll have another chance at that one.
As an Indian, I am gonna GLOAT. Big time.
My ass-wipe toilet-paper of a passport gives me 1 and only 1 real perk. I get to get to Bhutan Visa- free. MUHAHAHA
Is this what it feels like to be from a developed nation, but for every other country ? 🥲(what's the policy on emojis on the sub)
Turkish passport is bad for first world, but quite top notch for any country on-par or poorer than us. Definitely understand the sentiment
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I am too autistic to understand any beyond basic smiley faces, for one data point.
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Yeah a friend lived in Madagaskar for a couple months and the stories were wild. Perhaps I should give it a try. I am personally not a big fan of places where there is a real threat to your personal safety or health. Forces you to be a lot more cautious and timid, and stick to the well beaten path. Definitely learned my lesson in this regard after some nights out in Brazilian cities that I tried to act as if I am still in Istanbul.
Try Botswana, especially if you enjoy nature tourism. Ghana has a lot going on too, from what I hear. Stay out of the Sahel and South Africa unless you have a guide/fixer.
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There are very few places on earth that are more dangerous (as a tourist) than the most violent large Latin American cities. Most of Africa is much much safer as long as you stay out of conflict zones, for example (and I mean conflict zones specifically, not say ‘the Congo in general’, much of which is very safe).
I have travelled Latin America extensively and there is a very large disparity in safety between countries/cities/neighborhoods. Also some places are rife with crimes where only the gang members kill each other while in others randos on the street are also targeted. I have found Argentina/Chile/Peru to be very safe places for example. Brazil was overall horrible and Colombian cities seemed to have decent areas and very bad ones.
My advantage might have been that I am quite a Mediterranean looking guy so I don't stand out as a tourist. Most people by default assumed I was Brazilian or something. I am a bit apprehensive that in Africa I will be very noticeably a foreigner.
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I think this is one of the tragedies of globalization. Diversity in the no the-plastic sense has been so reduced that unless you have the time and money to get far from trade routes, you’ll only really see the touristy Disney-fied versions of the country you’re visiting. To me, even bothering to look for such things isn’t worth the time simply because it’s so rare that unless you have tons of free time and money, you won’t actually find it.
The MOPs process often means that the very act of discovery (especially if you tell others about that place) tends to quickly destroy them. This happens a lot with natural wonders and beaches. Once it hits the internet, everyone looking for things to do that aren’t crowded and full of consumerism go there, quickly turning it into the thing they were trying to avoid.
time and money to get far from trade routes,
Time sure, but money? Surely it's cheaper to go to less touristed places almost by definition, as the further off the tourist path you go the less demand there is.
I believe he is right actually. Being near the common backpacker routes mean lots of cheap hostel infrastructure. If the country is not dirt poor, going off the route can mean your only option for accommodation might become more expensive local hotels (unless you are okay with bed-bug infested prostitution hotels)
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It’s ironic in a sense because what I am personally doing (trying to find interesting nice places not well known) also means more and more places get used to my tourist income and transform into tourist parks. It’s a wonderful feeling to arrive at a cute town that doesn’t have a tourist info booth and locals treat you as a genuinely interesting oddity and not a cash cow.
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