Not every vacation needs to be a relaxing getaway from the moans and drones of our mundane lives. Cruise? no thank you. All inclusive? I’d rather not. Hotel in Miami? That’s pushing it. We tend to treat vacations as rewards for our hard work. We say we deserve a break from our daily grind. We say we want to experience the thrills of the greater world to make up for our extensive stay on the wheely cubicle chair. I hate to break it to you, but pumping your fist in a European nightclub next to folks trying to escape from the same monotonous cycle as yourself, barely counts as a “thrilling experience”. The world is far more vast than the attractions you see on website sidebar ads and your instagram feed. First of all, we don’t deserve anything…more on this later. Second, the vacation you’re so keen on “finding yourself” on won’t really come from a guided hiking tour of the Thailand coast. These are things people do to relax and have fun. The experiences are fine, and the things you’ll see are totally cool and neat. I do get the appeal, and I really shouldn’t discount it, but when you avoid “fun” and “relaxing” on your next travel trip, you’ll just never look at vacation the same way again.
Vacations are great and all, but they’ll rarely ever open your eyes to the real experiences that exist outside the realm of a carefully curated trip. Experiences come from the nooks and crannies of places that you never would have thought to explore in the first place. They come from the lives of regular people, in regular places, doing regular things, with no intention of making a buck off you or getting a good review. Sure, there are outlier cases, but you know what I mean. To really bust open your brain to awe experiences, you have to understand that vacations are really just meant to be an escape, and escaping from something really isn’t all that fun. It’s honestly, kind of depressing. Don’t vacation, travel instead. travel is a leap of faith, an activity with no bounds, and will always be a unique and interesting experience.
For more adventurous, thrilling travel, try following these few simple rules:
First rule: Avoid any travel curated by someone besides yourself and your pals. Fuck a tour guide. Fuck a travel agency. Most of all, fuck anyone who tells you that you can’t experience something properly unless you do it to their very specific way. Travel is the freedom to go wherever the wind decides to blow you next. Curated travel is a ball and chain.
Second rule: Do it as cheap as you possibly can. When I travel, I find the cheapest way to get from point A to point B. This means cheap flights, lots of road trips, camping in tents, sleeping in cars, and walmart shopping trips. By keeping a tight budget, you can travel with less items to carry and keep track of. Less items is always a plus if you’re Led Nudd. Traveling with a tight budget also allows you to save for the future…which leads to more travel. Traveling without frivolous spending is just an extension of the Led Nudd lifestyle. You’re not escaping from Led Nudd, like you would on a vacation, you’re just extending the philosophy deeper into an additional part of your life.
Third rule: Be open to doing things that may seem difficult while traveling. Vacation is for taking breaks, travel is for embracing hardship. When you think of travel, you may imagine lying back on a reclining beach chair and waking up with a tan, but I challenge you to reject this. If you want to experience something real, something truly magical, try hitting the road with no plans for your nightly sleeping accommodations. Try making your meals. Try walking really really far just to see how far you can go. Trust a stranger. Break a law. Climb something in your immediate view. Challenge yourself to do uncomfortable things. When you travel harder, you’re traveling right. You’re gaining real experiences that bond with your brain in uniquely useful ways. You’ll learn something and you’ll have memories that you’ll never forget.
The next time someone suggests a vacation in the form of a cruise, attend, but spend your time in the arcade, hosting an underground skeeball league. Do something bold. Go to a biker bar. Walk across your state. Tent camp in your closest unregulated woods. Challenge the definition of vacation and get ready to completely change your perspective of the world around you. There’s so much more to see than what you’ll see trying to see all you think you want to see.
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