How to travel with no plan
Ditch your phone when you travel. Open yourself up to surprises!
Every summer, Bala and I rent a car, pick a spot on a map, and drive.1
We show up with no plan. No agenda. Just a willingness to explore. The goal is to know as little as possible. Last year, we went to Wyoming. The year before was Utah. This year, we booked it to Montana.
For most of my life, I’ve been an avid planner. I’ve always approached every trip with a well-researched, robust itinerary,2 but, lately, I’ve found myself getting lost in the structures I create.
I get so caught up with “maximizing” my trips —visiting all the must-see landmarks, picture-esque landscapes, eating the highest-rated foods— that I struggle to really live in the moment. If I’m not thinking about what’s next, I’m comparing what I expected to see what what I experienced. I end up leaving very little room for awe.
So I figured, why not should travel with no expectations?
What began as an attempt at exposure therapy soon became a tradition. Who knew that simply going by vibe could be so nourishing?
What you’ll need
(Second) best thing about traveling without your phone is not having to charge it.
When we went camping, I wasn’t pressed about having a constant source of electricity. In fact, when I was checking out of the Many Glacier Hotel… the power went out and I didn’t bat an eye.
Here are some things that’ll help when traveling sans-phone:
A printed map
A compass
A bangin’ roadtrip playlist (+ cd player to play it)
A watch
Cash (you never know when you’ll encounter roadside pie)3
You don’t really need much. Just pack for the weather! The rest will follow.
I’ll concede that national parks are probably the best place to travel without a phone since you don’t get cell service half the time. That, and the fact that the park is basically a big loop. Park rangers are always up to help you out, too! <3
The luxury of a long, slow breakfast
To me, nothing screams Vacation4 more than a long, elaborate breakfast. I suspect it has something to do with how packed my mornings usually are (I’m useless after 5pm).
Being in nature, we discovered some pretty fabulous breakfast spots. If I were to “optimize” anything on my trip, I decided it would be the experience of my first sip of coffee each day. We never knew when that moment would take place, but it always made itself clear each day.
Baby Chairs
My mum has this theory that life is just finding the right person to chase the same sunset in different places with. She’s made a habit of bringing foldable chairs wherever she goes with my dad, just in case there was a sunset worth stopping for.
My happy places
Maybe because this trip came about as an escape from my year-long stretch of burnout, but since returning, I’ve started picturing these spots in moments of stress.
On a trek back to our campsite, Bala and I decided to take a detour on a whim.5 To our surprise, we were greeted by a moose. The scene was out of the many (many) paintings we saw on display at the ancient lodges we drove past.
There were a few others spectating next to us. We were all so quiet, so careful to not disturb this creature’s peace, that the gentle rippling sounds of water seemed loud. The sweet tingle of my nervous system calming down made me reconsider what silence means in my life: am I ever really experiencing silence when I regard it as merely “not listening” to music? What’s the most quiet place in New York?6
Off the beaten paths
**Because we were in a National Park, we stayed on designated trails so as to not disrupt the local wildlife/ecosystems! You should do the same!**
To my note on embracing serendipity, an unexpected highlight of my trip was actually not in nature: it was the American Computer and Robotics museum.
I saw the only Apple I computer on display, a replica of the Analytical Engine, a signed copy of Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, even a replica of the UNIVAC that got us to the moon. It was really neat, especially cause I’ve spent so much of my life researching computing history.
Can we even navigate without a GPS?
Last year, when I wrote a similar post, I positioned maps as the “antidote” to the algorithm simply because it wasn’t personalized. What I had neglected to include was the politics of cartography.
Every map has an intended audience. Google Maps quietly redraws Kashmir and Crimea depending on which country you’re logging in from. Paper Towns are sprinkled across maps as copyright mechanisms. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t trust maps (they’re not always trying to sell us ads),7 but maybe there’s something to just finding our own way.
Shayla Love’s latest New Yorker essay explores our dwindling navigational capacities. “Do we lose something when we no longer get lost?” she asks. Love, in an experiment of her own, chronicles an instinctual need to check her phone as she made her way through Brooklyn. Being without constant instruction might be uncomfortable at first, but I promise it settles. Like riding a bike!
My traumatic return
Plugging my phone back in8 sent shivers down my spine. I wish I were embellishing, but the assault of notifications that came with my resuscitating device was (for lack of a better term) triggering. I was being thrusted back into my reality of deadlines.
At least New York welcomed me back with open arms. Let me walk you through it:
Our flight is delayed by 4 hours. We’re now landing at midnight.
The emergency evacuation alarm goes off in the Bozeman airport. Three times. It’s a false alarm.
I get trapped in a NYC elevator (for the uninitiated, imagine a sauna of sweat, pee, and rotting trash mixed)
The emergency evacuation alarm goes off in Newark. Twice. Also false alarm.
Rat roadkill. Multiple accounts.
I lose power to my apartment upon arrival because I turned on my AC and microwave at the same time (it was never an issue).
My kitchen sink didn’t drain properly before I left, so water bugs started swarming my kitchen.
All while the anxiety of opening my inbox and checking my messages loom over me, festering as I come to the inevitable realization that I’ll be missing a few deadlines.
As I write this at my local coffee shop, I’m surrounded by start-up bros having the same conversation about moving from the Bay to New York, living in Forte Greene, and hiring their third employee for yet another AI startup. We’re SO back.
Give it a go! You won’t regret it :)
Getting lost isn’t an art. Learning to let yourself get lost is. Go wander! Go frolic! Learn to trust your instincts to experience real whimsy.
Hello! If you’ve made it this far — thank you for joining me on my neo-luddite pilgrimage. If you’d like to support some of my more rogue ventures in cyber celibacy (typewriters, building a printing press… more to come), upgrade to paid! You’ll find treats sprinkled in your inbox <3
This tradition started as an accident: we had bought cheap tickets to Utah and forgotten about them. Traveling with no plan surprised us. So we made it an annual thing.
Yes, I am that friend who would wake you up at 5am with a list of twenty spots to visit just to make the most of the day.
I had carpark sourdough once. Unlike its cousin, bike weed, it changed my life.
Yes, V for Vacation.
Somehow using the term “whimsy” here doesn’t feel right.
Let me know if I should launch a full on investigation into this!
The Michelin Guide…? (Conspiracy theory incoming)
I brought my phone just in case of emergencies. It was out of battery the whole time.