The art and joy of spontaneous travel

I can’t remember the last time I made a list of things to do when I was on a trip. I decide where to go, read a bit about the place so I’m not completely ignorant when I get there, and then I just go with how I feel.

I’m not fussed what time I get up (the excitement of being in a new place has always helped me get up at a decent hour anyway!), and I’m not fussed if I don’t see all the “have to see” stuff. I never carry a map. My sense of direction is awful, but I find myself paying more attention to where I am when I don’t have a map and when I haven’t got a destination in mind. As long as I get a good feel of the city, it’s people, it’s culture and it’s food, I leave a happy person.

In other words: I take it pretty easy when I go to a new place and never plan a daily itinerary in advance. I think encountering the unknown or the unexpected is most rewarding when you travel and this is what not-planning allows you to do.

The Guardian today published a feature of snippets from various travel-writers on this subject. Each snippet is a tip on how you can enjoy your travels more without planning, with a personal example to support it. Here is a summary:

• Guardian Travel Editor Isabel Choat — Stop organising: “Plan less. Meet more Mr Trungs.” Read the piece to know who Mr Trung is 🙂
• Poet, author and playwright Owen Sheers — Let the city be your guide: “But leave the guide book and mapped routes in the hotel room; the best option is to let the city itself guide you. As a walker’s city one of the best ways to do this is to let the never-ending pattern of stop/go lights decide your route.”
• Author and travel-writer Annie Hawes — Put your trust in others: We’ve talked about this here at Vagablogging as well.
• Author Jason Webster — Don’t book: “[redacted]…the unexpectedness of our visit, and the intensity of it, added to the beauty we found there.[t]he experience was made precisely by being off-the-cuff.
• Non-fiction author and journalist Geert Mak — Slow Down: We’ve talked about ‘Slow Travel’ a number of times on Vagablogging, here is his take on it: “Slow Travel is a way of getting more in touch with a place. Having to spend an afternoon in a cafe on a rainy day, or at a station waiting for a train isn’t a hardship, its a a chance to become part of the rhythm of a place, if only for a few hours. When you are forced to stop in one place, then you are really traveling.

You can read the full piece here.