Why I Can Never Enjoy Traveling

Last week I went on my first ever travel with a friend who was very excited to travel with me. We had decided an itinerary of the trip and booked various AirBnbs accordingly. There were two parts to the trip, one was traveling to NYC and other to Acadia national park. This was my first travel for leisure within the US, as most of my travels were concerned with flying to India to be with my family.

I earlier was of strong notion that I don’t need to travel for the sake of travel. Rather it was more to visit people or have some purpose like a conference, job interview or yoga workshop. I had traveled for these various reasons but never to enjoy. Personally, I only enjoyed traveling with my family to be specific when we took family vacations. I bought into the peer pressure of media and friends that I should at least see NYC in the US and visit the natural beauty of the US too. To give some background, I have been in the USA for almost nine years but have hardly traveled anywhere.

Here were some of my personal observations after this trip in general – 

• I felt I spent a lot of money on unnecessary things. Now I would like to take accountability for this part, however, it was hard to be economic when traveling with a person who is not watchful of their spending. It was wrong of me to expect the person to be mindful of their spending, as they spent around $1000 in a week which was of-course split, however I don’t see any reason to spend collectively $1400 on a single week. I simply couldn’t enjoy spending that much money on just myself.
• Consuming unhealthy Food throughout. Again this is something that I could have worked on, however, this was also influenced by the person I was traveling with. Not mindful of food around and not making any effort to preplan meals to make them in advance or even consider the idea of cooking while on vacation. I am very mindful of what I eat, and I hardly like to eat outside, unless it is absolutely necessary. This constant searching for the next restaurant is taxing combined with limited options for vegetarian. Also, in the USA, I felt NYC has decent food options, however most other places are heavy on meat and leave you with hardly much choices. On top of that we were making unhealthy choices and paying way too much for those choices. Another reason to not enjoy the trip. 
• Wasting fuel with bad planning for the trip. I am a computer scientist, and I try to optimize my trips to avoid back and forth, to see the place in entirety. Firstly, I experienced our route wasn’t planned well by my friend as their interest was in maximizing comfort over gas. This lead to using Uber where we could have taken public transport, take public transport where we could have walked, and go on some random routes 20 miles away, instead of completing the remaining places to see at the given spot. Ideally, I would have done the following:
  • NYC is a place where you can use the public transport to get anywhere as it is well connected.
  • I didn’t see any need to use Uber for traveling from Brooklyn to NYC when I could take subway.
  • I saw no point in taking public transport in Central Park, when we could have simply walked.
  • We did two wasted trips in Acadia National Park, where we left two hike routes without completing them. We decided to see a lighthouse 20 miles away and it was not even a proper light house.
  • This left me really annoyed with the wasteful expense as well as gas.
• One day we went to Boston, we had planned to take car and drive away from city after we are done with the work in Boston. We as usual cut that trip short and came back home in the afternoon wasting money in expensive parking in Boston, when we could have taken public transport again. 

I feel that my natural instinct is to always save not only money, but natural resources to as much as possible. I am that person who wears clothes until they rip, and I recycle/donate my clothes. My apartment has no unnecessary items, and I regularly get rid of any unnecessary things at home. For someone who has been constantly practicing minimalistic lifestyle, I felt really dissatisfied with the level of wastage that took place.

I don’t think I will take anymore trips again with someone just for the sake of traveling. I can’t let go of wastage, and I can’t even expect the person with me to be lean in their spending. On one occasion I did mention to my friend that I was spending $100 on single day in the trip, to which their reply was that this is the cost of enjoyment. I don’t think I can enjoy by paying $100 for experience that is wasteful to begin with. I rather relax in my apartment, read a book, do yoga, meditate, cook and watch movie to enjoy. I feel that I don’t need a lot for enjoyment, saving natural resources, taking care of my body, mind is what I feel is meaningful than seeing a city full of people walking around minding their business. I felt the national park was beautiful but couldn’t see everything that I had a chance to see due to random decisions of my friend. 

My only learning now is that I wouldn’t travel on such trips anymore. Had I been in India, I would travel to our sacred temples, I see myself doing that in future and that is the only time I would like to travel again.