If the endpoint is in your control and you'd like to experiment with Tor, you can configure your server as an Onion Service, so you are protected by Tor's own end-to-end encryption (whose traffic cannot be captured by MITM since the hostnames themselves are the public keys). For non-anonymous uses, you should active the "Single Service Onion" mode, so the 6-hop (extra 3-hop for server anonymity) is skipped, allowing standard 3-hop latency and performance. It also saves bandwidth for exit nodes - all non-exit relays can forward Onion traffic.