By Maggie Gordon Travel writer inks book for the ‘globally curious’
STAFF WRITER
Think about your next vacation for a second — a week at a Caribbean beach, Colorado ski slope, Tuscan villa or whichever fill-in-theblank location you’ve been googling incessantly since you decided to book your tickets.
Now ask yourself this: Why are you going?
No, really. Why are you going?
That’s the question that Seth Kugel encourages travelers to ask of themselves in his new book, “Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious.”
“I urge people to think about why they want to go to a specific place. Really dig deep and figure out why you personally want to go to that place and make sure it’s for your own purposes, your own reasons, your own passions and your own interests,” Kugel said during a recent phone interview. “Not because of some sort of peer pressure, whether that’s literally peer pressure of your friends or societal peer pressure.”
These days, thanks to social media, there’s tons of external pressure to do things for show. But that’s no reason to blow an entire paycheck on Booking.com.
In his book, Kugel, who worked for six years as the New York Times’s “Frugal Traveler,” includes an entire chapter, “Why we travel,” in which he offers a long list of reasons, from “To figure out the world” to “To boost our social standing.” “We travel at least in small part to shape what people think of us,” Kugel writes. “Everybody gets a kick out of announcing where they’re off to and regaling friends with stories upon their return. Not you? Yeah, right — imagine how different your next trip would be if you were forced to undertake it in secret.”
That means no stories. No photos. No posts on social media. No gifts for friends. Ever.
He posits that you’d set a different itinerary for your trip than the one you’d originally planned in your head. So why not just plan that personal vacation from the beginning?
“Is what you’re doing every day what you really want to be doing, or what you want to tell other people you’re doing?” he mused over the phone “This is a problem that has existed way before social media, but social media has exacerbated it.”
Just think about this example he offers in his book. Say you’re heading to Paris. You’ll hear that you just have to go to the Louvre. And while at the Louvre you absolutely can’t skip the “Mona Lisa.” But why? “The Louvre once determined that 80 percent of its seven million annual visitors come principally to see the Mona Lisa. Why? Because its artistic quality so outshines the thirty-eight thousand other pieces on display? Because a passion for Renaissance art is embedded in their DNA? Not a chance,” he writes.
“It’s because it’s famous. And as a result, it’s bound to disappoint most who see it,” the book continues.
Same goes for the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal, both of which you’ve likely seen in enough photos that seeing them in person, where clouds may be in the way and other tourists may obscure your view, can never measure up to the postcard images embedded in your consciousness.
Because of this, Kugel said that though there’s certainly room for research before every trip, he cautions not to dive too deep, lest you lose some of the immediate joy that accompanies discovering something for the first time.
“If you’ve read or seen too many pictures about something, maybe you’ll still be amazed. But to me, if I’ve read all the reviews, and seen all the pictures, it’s never quite as good,” he said. “Before you see a movie, do you read every review you can find of it?”
Sure, there’s room for research. But Kugel draws a line between preparation and saturation.
“My system is that I plan a great deal, but I leave the scheduling flexible,” he said. “I don’t say, ‘I’m going to do this on this day and this on that day. I like to make a big list of stuff, and plan day by day and see how it goes.”
That tactic served him well from 2010 through 2016, when he embarked on dozens of budget-conscious trips for the Times. And it’s certainly not the only thing he gleaned from the dream job. In addition to when to plan and when to wing it, his book offers insight into budgeting and risk, through a collection of what feel like stand-alone travel essays.
His ultimate goal, he said, is that those who read “Rediscovering Travel” will feel empowered to plan their next trips with their pleasure in mind.