How I traveled

Attempting adventures, Creating connections, Spotting self

Context

I have lived in 3 distinct geo-bound headspaces, along with in the real world:
Initial 18 years at State, next 8 years at National, and latest 8 years at Global scales.

Cities visited by Sitesh

This conscious expansion has been an immersive exercise in world modelling via iterative reconstructions from the ground up, that started with a feeling of know-it-all, followed by cognitive dissonance, and arriving at a realistic situational awareness.

Human existence is an embodied 3D experience that requires each individual to go through their own journey of lived experience to work it out in fullness; attempts to transfer learning from another’s experience via alternative mediums seem futile.

The best way to speedrun this process seems to be Travel, which is essentially Intensified Living - A voluntary exposure to the diversity of people, places, and activities of the world to get to the realization you don’t know what you don’t know.

I attempt to note down some findings of my own after being at it for 10+ years.

Itinerary

Over the years, through tons of experiments, I have arrived at the personal belief that the objective of travel in crux is to live as a local for a short period.

Another preference is to find locals at the places visited instead of taking acquaintances along. The latter seems to create a familiarity cocoon that travels with you and strips any motivation of tackling social awkwardness of approaching strangers, and at the same time prevents strangers’ approach because of a group moat.

Common elements that I end up redoing while travelling to different places:

• Stay at a hostel
  I preferred to stay at hostels, even if I could afford better options, as they’re a great base for town activity with a ready mix of locals and travellers. Also, a great place to form a day trip and city activities group.

• Run a big city circuit
  Curating a 10km running route through the city is a great way to scan the city, making sure to skip the earbuds to get a thorough sensory feedback.

• Join a free walking tour
  Most cities have free (tip-based) walking tours where volunteers guide a loose group through city highlights while narrating interesting factoids for ~2 hours - also, an organic way to catch up with people and spend the day together later.

• Eat native cuisine 1x/day
  It’s a challenge to spot actual native cuisine & drinks. I commit to finding at least one full-course meal restaurant daily. It has become ±50% of my reason for travel.

• Attend a dance social
  After many experiments, I figured pair dancing is a great way to mix fun and meeting local ladies in a decent ratio setting. Latin music/dance seems to be widely popular, with most cities having weekly events. Bachata is my jam.

• Meet local people
  I end up scanning for any interesting social events or activities on Meetup.com and interesting people on CouchSurfing to ask to be +1 in their day plan.
  Same day/Last minute usually works, but quite a process funnel to weed through.

Platforms

Once you arrive at the belief that the world is full of friends you just haven’t met yet, seeking out interesting locals requires looking them up on specific corners of the web.
With the obvious caveats for human nature, way more people are nice and trustworthy.

1. CouchSurfing - Stay with strangers
   Visiting all ~200 countries might take a lifetime, but meeting a person from each is viable, and CS was the ideal platform to host or surf with them. ±3 days of talking & doing things with people from 50+ countries gets you quite the exposure.
   (May have to kick out ungrateful, demanding hitchhiker now and then)

Countries whose people I hosted or surfed (subset)

2. Meetup - Hang with strangers
   In any city, special interest groups formed are a great signal of people’s spirit. Showing up at these wide-ranging events is the way to make friends as adults.
   (May have to deal with extremely socially awkward people occasionally)
   

3. BlaBlaCar - Move with strangers
   Moving together lets people drop their guards, and tackling all sorts of troubles on the way is a great exercise in building connections.
   (May have to be picked up in a car with a high on weed driver at times)

Visualization of other ways I dabbled around the world:

• Uber rides. By design, cab drivers pick pulse of the city. Chats with them may be the most fascinating ones I've had, once I get past the mood & language barriers.

• Classpass group workouts. Profusely sweating out with strangers gets you on the same footing, and suffering intense stress together strips all facades.

• Extreme sports. Playing in nature at remote places taps into a good cohort.

• Hostel hangouts.

Media

In 2023, during a San Francisco visit, Lexi reached out for an interview for her video story attempt to capture the essence of CouchSurfing. I gladly appeared in it to help.

In 2021, during the COVID lockdowns, I attempted to record chats about the themes I find fascinating when meeting people worldwide in the podcast Beyond the Borders.

Looking back, it seems movies watched while coming of age leave a lasting impact.
My top 3: Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Into the Wild.

Observations

Travelling generates a simultaneous awareness of extreme contrasts and similarities in the world. They can become alienating or welcoming, entirely depending on the wiring of an individual and their conscious effort into it. A few things worth noticing:

• People
  People differ widely, as individuals as well as groups.
  Physiognomy can feel alien. I felt like a good people reader, and 7/10 guesses on meeting an Indian person would be right, but that radar utterly failed with other ethnicities on initial contact, took over a year of rewiring mental models to pick up subtleties of facial expression, body language, speech accentuation, etc.
  

• Culture
  Culture is the operating system that establishes rules of engagement among people by shaping the nurture part beyond our built-in nature. This varies widely, as in language, art, music, traditions, social norms, and religious beliefs.
  Evaluating its effect on human flourishing, some cultures are better than others.

• Values

  Values are inward-looking, which gives meaning to people’s lives and generalizes well across: a sense of belonging, unconditional family love & net positive impact.
  

• Nature
  On the first trip outside India, it was striking how different the sunlight hit, disorientingly felt like walking inside the video games I’d played. As humans have terraformed Earth, it has shaped us as well - sun, clouds, soil, vegetation, wind, latitude, and animals collectively immensely influence our perspective on life.
  

Closure

During my stint at 2 major travel companies, I noticed that travelling is one of the activities that genuinely makes people excited about life; unsurprisingly, every capable person with disposable income ends up making travel their priority in current times.

I wonder if it’s 100,000 years of hunter-gatherer DNA that gets automatically satisfied by getting on a flight, irrespective of purpose, triggering a sense of movement for me?

With more than a decade of visiting 100s of cities across 33 countries, spending time with people from 50+ countries to make sense of cultural, geographic, and economic influences, I feel like having a decent mental model to put myself in others’ shoes.

I may have peaked the novelty phase of travel with the width and depth of the exposure, but at the same time, realizing that having 8B+ unique individuals on this vast planet ensures a surprise right around the corner for a lifetime worth of living.