I have admittedly traveled quit a lot, but these days I travel a lot less, partially due to COVID the last few years and partially due to limiting myself to train or low emission transport when possible. These days I primarily travel to meet people, to see a live performance or ten, just hang out and experience the culture or experiencing something together with other people.

In the end, there are only that many museums, waterfalls or temples you want to see. It probably is a relatively wealthy persons perspective, but like in the post, the lasting memories tend to be the people.

quite clickbaity headline, one would expect author will say you should travel to meet and talk to the strangers/locals to experience local life, while the article suggest to visit your friends/acquaintances instead traveling for the destination, which sounds only a little bit less ignorant (still staying in her social bubble of most likely rich people) than her original approach being typical tourist not talking to anyone

when I traveled on shoestring talking to locals was inevitable, because that's your cheapest experience, you won't rent a car or private minivan, you use the cheapest bus like the locals, you don't dine in fancy restaurant tourist traps and few rich locals, you go to small hole in the wall restaurant where they never seen foreigner and don't have English menu, etc etc.

sadly smartphones destroyed a lot of this experiences with no need to ask locals for directions and various kinds of information you can find online, so you can stay in your bubble without talking to locals and if you limit your smartphone usage even locals find your strange since even they use them

At my most cynical I cannot find a single unkind thing to think about this little article. It's perfectly nice, relates perfectly legit observation, espouses a perfectly good take away from that observation, and I have no idea what the title is supposed to be guilty of. It like the rest is perfectly genuine and simple and nice. It's not trying to do anything wrong. It doesn't want anything from you.

you don't call your friends just the "people", so the headline implies he travels to meet strangers, while it should say Traveling just for the friends

I feel that traveling for the landmarks and museums is exhausting and ultimately futile. If you're not an amateur art historian, a lot of paintings look the same, once you've seen several hundred. How many Rosetta stones and busts of Pericles and Japanese castles do you need in your life?

I still don't have a good idea of why I might want to travel internationally. In most locations, I think I'd have trouble integrating with locals and living in their environment, at their pace, in their language. I don't have friends I want to visit in Kolkata. Obviously, a lot of people like to lie on beaches in Hawaii and walk through California redwoods, but until you have a sentimental attachment to a particular beach or a particular national park, they're all kind of the same.

And I obviously don't have a good idea about traveling for the experience of "sampling people," mostly because I'm pretty sure I have aged out of slumming it on a bunk bed at a hostel packed with Eurotrash teens traveling from one rave to another.

One possibility is travelling with people you know, just as something interesting and memorable to do together.

It's true that, for example, after travelling for a couple weeks in the American West I don't really need to see another canyon for a while. I've learned to slow down. You don't need to see a lot on one day.

But I'm still glad I took those trips while my dad was still alive and mom was still up to travelling.

Every once in a while there's an article by a travel writer singing praises of an active vacation where travelers do eco-stays on working farms or help weave rope for hanging bridges. On one hand, that sounds cool. On the other, I've found it very hard to find stuff like that, and I wonder if those activities are just makework for bored rich tourists.

I do think it really depends where you go. I traveled to India for 2 months in 2004 knowing nobody when I went (but leaving having made the acquaintance of several people) and I still think about this trip almost 20 years later.

Another European country with churches and castles (I live in Germany and used to live in Austria)? I probably don't need to go there unless I have someone to visit. Going to India was like visiting another world & it truly enriched my life (or I wouldn't still be thinking about it 20 years later!), I think there are plenty other places like that - might not be that easy to find which ones are the best fit for you though!

If you've seen several hundred paintings, then art historian or not, you should be making progress on telling them apart. (To be sure, you will likely also be deciding that some aren't worth traveling to see.) I have so far got by with no Rosetta stones, busts of Pericles and Japanese castles. But I'd love another look at the Uffizi, the Louvre, or the Vatican museums.

Being midways through a 8 month trip through Latinamerica, and having been on similarly sized travels earlier, I can say that it is definitely the people you remember. I don't remember much of the landmarks etc., but I still remember a lot of the conversations I've held with people. They made it special.

I'm an introvert, I definitely don't travel just for the people - that sounds like hell.

But I do love eating, and that's one of the reasons I travel. Go eat street food, eat fancy food, eat fast food, eat whatever the locals are eating.

"Does the destination sound tasty?" That's how a lot of my travel is decided :)

I travel because it’s the only way I can find live-able, walkable cities. America is a desolate wasteland in terms of the places that make me happy.