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- [00:00]
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Elise Hu
this is Life Kit from NPR. We start in Hawaii just before sunrise on a Hawaiian volcano, Haleakala. It's a volcano 2 million years old. To get there, you have to drive for hours in the dark because the
- [00:31]
Jenny Odell
sun hasn't come up to the top of this volcano to take a photo of the sunrise, which always looks really amazing because it kind of comes up over these clouds.
- [00:39]
Elise Hu
Jenny o', Dell, an artist from California, trekked there with her parents to catch this famous sunrise. But it wasn't so picture perfect.
- [00:48]
Jenny Odell
It's really cold and windy up there. Everyone's just like shivering and like waiting for the sun to come up. And they were like using their selfie sticks to get their cameras over other people's cameras so that there wouldn't be people in the photo. And then as soon as the bottom of the sun was above the clouds so it's no longer a sunrise, everyone got back in their cars and drove down the volcano like it's a national park. You could look at other things there, but it was just like, you know, okay, no, I have consumed this image now, so there is no longer a reason for me to be here and I will leave.
- [01:21]
Elise Hu
Surely we don't just travel to capture an image and leave, but it seems like that's happening. You can't open up a browser tab this summer without seeing stories about swarms of tour crowding once serene places. So during this age when everything is relentlessly mediated through social media, we wanted to step back for a moment. What is traveling away from home really for? How can it be more meaningful? This is NPR's life kit guide on travel. We have episodes on planning and packing and on social dynamics when you travel together. This one is a little different. This is about why we wander in the first place. What's the point? How do we make our trips more fulfilling? I'm Elise Hu, an NPR west based correspondent who does a lot of travel for work and pleasure with friends and family, which got me thinking, what do we mean by travel for pleasure? Is it really pleasurable? How do we make it better for our souls and selves?
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Tori Desroche
It doesn't have to be anything apart from what you make it.
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Elise Hu
Travel writer Tori Desroche and artist Jenny o' Dell on making the most of leaving home. Maybe without leaving home at all, you
- [02:27]
Tori Desroche
don't have to go to the other side of the world to be transformed.
- [02:31]
Elise Hu
It's coming up in this NPR Life Kit after the break.
- [02:38]
Commercial Announcer
This message comes from American Home Shield. An AHS home warranty helps protect your major systems and appliances, no matter how old. Do you have an unreliable AC or a leaky water heater? AHS understands the headache and financial burden of surprise breakdowns. With an AHS Home warranty, they'll fix a covered item when it breaks, and if they can't repair it, they'll replace it. Plus, as a benefit to select plans, you can even video chat with a repair expert to help troubleshoot home hassles over the phone. American Home Shield don't worry. Be warranty. Get 20% off all plans@ahs.com NPR and see promo details. See ahs.com contracts for coverage details, including service fees, limitations and exclusions. This message comes from Capital One Commercial Bank. Your business requires commercial banking solutions that prioritize your long term success with Capital One. Get a full suite of financial products and services tailored to meet your needs today and goals for tomorrow. Learn more@Capital1.com Commercial Member FDIC.
- [03:49]
Elise Hu
You can find so much on the Internet about traveling better, whether it's trying to get more upgrades on your flights or minimizing your wait time for trains or packing hacks. Guilty travel guides often focus on the practical stuff. But traveling well isn't just about getting from point A to point B. So this episode is about the art of travel, why we do it, and how we can make it most meaningful.
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Tori Desroche
Meaningful experiences aren't a good time or a bad time. You can go away and spend 30 days crying and that can be meaningful to you. It can be meaningful to your life.
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Elise Hu
Tori Desroche is an Australian travel writer who began her life as an adventurer when she left her job as a graphic designer and set sail on a rinky dink boat for more than two years with the man she was dating.
- [04:40]
Tori Desroche
It was the 1979 sailboat that was covered in these blisters because it wasn't, it was, it had an aesthetic problem that made it half price. My ex, he had been saving for years and years to do this dream of his and it's not terribly costly and, and it leaked and it, it had all kinds of issues. So it was anything but luxury.
- [05:06]
Elise Hu
Before this point, Desroche never went on vacations longer than a few weeks and she was terrified of deep water. But she faced her fears.
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Tori Desroche
We spent two years and we sailed from, from Los Angeles down to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico and that was hell. It was a hellish journey.
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Elise Hu
Our high hopes for a great time can easily be dashed by the hassles or hellish experiences. But deroche says even those can be transformative because they force you to stretch yourself as she did.
- [05:34]
Tori Desroche
So since then, I've kind of almost sought out adventures that seem challenging and beyond my reach to some degree. And I've done walking pilgrimages through Italy and through India, and I've climbed Mount Kinabalu in Borneo and, yeah, done all kind. I've been all over the world doing all kinds of strange things since. Since then.
- [05:58]
Elise Hu
Her takeaway on meaningful travel is our first tip for you. Meaning is what you make it. A meaningful time isn't necessarily a good time or a bad time. You bring the context and meaning to your experiences, even if it's not the postcard version of a place.
- [06:13]
Tori Desroche
Don't fight it. It's a perfectly valid experience to cry in Italy while eating gelato. So. So, yeah, giving up this idea that travel has to look like something that you know, that maybe you're seeing on Instagram, that it has to be beautiful, that it has to be joyful, that it has to be social. It doesn't have to be anything apart from what you make it.
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Elise Hu
Go ahead, cry in Italy. You don't have to perform your trip for anyone else. Tip number two, to find fulfillment in adventure, make yourself uncomfortable. Confront what scares you.
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Tori Desroche
For starters, because it's every new country you go and every new culture presents its own challenges. So I'm always. It's. I'm always kind of loosening up my fears every time I go somewhere.
- [07:06]
Elise Hu
Tori did it by setting sail for years, something she never thought she would do. Traveling to new places is a way for us to stretch beyond our comfort zones. So engineer your travel so you're doing things that scare you a little bit.
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Tori Desroche
It brings me closer to other cultures. It brings me closer to other countries and to the planet itself. Every time I go away, I feel strongly connected to the world and to other people in the world. And that in itself is empowering. When we live in a city, I think you can easily slip into this feeling of individualism where it's us and them. We get surrounded by terrible media telling us to be afraid of other people. And when you travel, it breaks all of that down. You realize the world isn't as scary as maybe you come to believe. And. And that just enriches my life and my experience of life.
- [08:05]
Elise Hu
A note here. While all this enrichment is uplifting, we have to remember that getting to travel at all is a pretty privileged situation. A lot of us can't afford to get away.
- [08:15]
Tori Desroche
My Prowse has a really great quote, which is the. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. So even. Even if you're in a state of grief and you're struggling with your life, go somewhere new and try to see it with new eyes. Try to be there in that moment with that experience right there, and see what.
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Elise Hu
This whole idea of going away without going very far at all is. Why I called up Jenny o'. Dell. O' Dell is an artist and author. She lives in Oakland and loves nature. She wrote a book called how to Do Nothing, and we caught her in her favorite rose garden.
- [08:58]
Jenny Odell
I'm usually here at least a couple times a week. I live in an apartment building, so I don't have a yard, so I kind of consider this my backyard.
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Elise Hu
She's going to help us dig into the why of travel, because understanding the purpose and being true to that can. Can bring us more satisfaction. That's takeaway number three. Remember the why? Why? Why should we go? Why should we get away?
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Jenny Odell
Yeah. Oh, are you asking me that?
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Elise Hu
Yeah. Yeah. It might be different for you, but try on this framing. We travel for perspective and surprise.
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Jenny Odell
You know, if you live with a pretty solid schedule or routine, there's certain things that you can start to take for granted. And just simply removing yourself from those circumstances, wherever you might end up, removing yourself to, is really helpful for getting some kind of new perspective on yourself and your life.
- [09:51]
Elise Hu
You said perspective, but also surprise.
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Jenny Odell
Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing that comes with routine is that you. You kind of expect things or you kind of maybe don't perceive things outside of what you're expecting. And I think, you know, the experience of traveling is, for a lot of people, opening yourself up to being surprised. Like, you're willing to be surprised, you're expecting to be surprised. And I think that's a very different mentality you have in your everyday life.
- [10:16]
Elise Hu
For Odell, her approach is to strike a balance between a little structure and a lot of room for surprises.
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Jenny Odell
Like, I'm sitting in the middle of a garden right now. It's a perfect example also of, like, there's a lot of work that goes into this garden. It's designed in a way to let you spend time here, and that's not arbitrary. Like, if this were just a random field, you know, there wouldn't be all these places to sit. You have to strike this balance between sort of designing something and Researching something, but also just understanding that the actual life of it is going to come from the place, not from the design. The design is just there to make that accessible to you.
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Elise Hu
So strike a balance between structure and nature.
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Jenny Odell
Yeah, and by nature I just mean like kind of what is already there. Like pre existing processes and things and beings.
- [11:02]
Elise Hu
For example, you can see the volcano at sunrise, but spend another few hours exploring. Exploring the natural world of the national park. Be open to a sign that could take you down a new path. Remember that why travel is meaningful if it helps us expand our perspective and if we can be surprised. And why do you think these two values or objectives are important?
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Jenny Odell
I equate them with feeling alive. If you take routine to its logical extreme, you're just sort of an automaton, right? Like you're going through the emotions like you're doing the things that you're supposed to be doing for the reasons you're supposed to be doing them. Maybe without a lot of room for questioning or thinking about something else you might rather be doing. And so being surprised and getting perspective, I think are two different ways of kind of like shaking free of that framework and continuing to change as a person.
- [11:53]
Elise Hu
Takeaway number four is about really going somewhere when you leave home. Is your travel about exploring a place or is it about checking off a box to get somewhere and be open? Treat travel as an experience and not as a product.
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Jenny Odell
It's almost like people go to the Grand Canyon expecting to like consume a postcard or something. That it's not an actual physical space with physical characteristics. There was one TripAdvisor review of the Grand Canyon where he said it was like a three star review. And he said once you've seen it, you've seen it. Which is just like a really interesting description of the Grand Canyon which is like formed over so long and it's such an amazing. I mean like it just goes to show, right? This kind of image based idea of travel where it's like I saw a photo, I want to go, possibly take that photo myself or be in it and then I will leave.
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Elise Hu
You can do more than just see it. To go somewhere, really go somewhere, treat yourself to travel. That is an experience, not a product to be consumed.
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Jenny Odell
Even in those kind of, you know, difficult or like logistically annoying moments. Just recognizing that you're somewhere new and something you haven't experienced before.
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Elise Hu
Which gets us to the next tip. Takeaway 5 For finding fulfillment and getting away. Seek out what makes the place you're in truly different from the last place you were in. Focus on what makes the place unique.
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Jenny Odell
Just kind of doing enough research ahead of time to find things that are specific to a place that you can't just experience somewhere else.
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Elise Hu
Volunteer while on a trip so you're not spending time in tourist traps. Give back to the local communities while learning about them at the same time. Forge friendships in a foreign place. Odell grounds herself in a sense of place by seeking out nature.
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Jenny Odell
I think you have a vague sense, right? Like if you go somewhere new, oh, like these are new trees or I don't know what kind of bird that is that I'm hearing or something like that.
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Elise Hu
She keeps an app called Inaturalist on her phone. It helps identify the creatures and plants wherever she goes. Each place you travel has its own unique ecology, so you can take it in.
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Jenny Odell
This kind of gives me, like, some traction. Like, I can start to, like, learn, you know, the names of things or just get like a little more detail about the ecological communities that live somewhere that are native to a place. And personally, I've started to feel like if before I've done that, I haven't truly arrived in a place. Especially if you're, you know, spending a lot of time in kind of sterilized commercial spaces that look the same as everywhere else. Like, I like to kind of try to find things to latch onto that are truly different about a place.
- [14:23]
Elise Hu
Part of the reason I went to the artist who wrote how to Do Nothing about Finding Meaning in Travel is because she went on a year and a half long road trip across America without even leaving her home.
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Jenny Odell
I did this project that honestly started
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out as kind of a gimmick.
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Elise Hu
She called it Travel by Approximation.
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Jenny Odell
It was a virtual road trip across the US Via Google Street View that I took. And it basically, the fictional travel narrative is two months, but it took me a year and a half to do because I used Street View to navigate and find stuff. And then once I found things that way, I would look them up on TripAdvisor, Yelp, YouTube. I just kind of try to get the overall picture of, you know, how this thing shows up online and all the experiences people had had of it. It's called Travel by Approximation because I tried to really approximate meet real travel.
- [15:13]
Elise Hu
She would pick actual restaurants, where she would eat if she went and calculate the drive time to them and how much gas it would take.
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Jenny Odell
I would order off the menu if possible. I was really trying to ask this question of when do you actually know a place? Or like, when, like, what does it mean to actually have been to a
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place and to know it.
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Elise Hu
In doing the project, she was also making a statement over. Planning your vacations means, in some ways, you've already gone on them in your head. The trip itself then becomes just executing it and not being transformed by new surroundings. How do you do more than just see a place? Like, how. How do you go somewhere and actually go there and be there?
- [15:55]
Jenny Odell
I think that it, you know, it has to do. Some of it has to do with just observation.
- [16:00]
Elise Hu
Don't just snap a photo. Observe. Take in the space and your surroundings. You can do that by talking to locals, the people who live there.
- [16:07]
Jenny Odell
It takes humility. And also, if you're a person who loves to plan everything in advance, it probably sounds a little bit scary.
- [16:13]
Elise Hu
The locals can guide you to good places that you didn't plan for.
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Jenny Odell
For me, like, talking to strangers is a really big part of it. Asking people, you know, asking strangers for recommendations is so different than having things recommended to you algorithmically. Because people have personal reasons for enjoying things. They have context around that, leaving enough unplanned space to acknowledge that the meaning is going to come from the place, not from you. Ahead of time, planning your trip like, that's impossible.
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Elise Hu
Both our experts, Tori Desroche and Jenny o', Dell, emphasize shifting our mindset to experience the newness and surprise you can get from travel.
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Jenny Odell
We are sort of, like, culturally used to applying one type of a mindset and one. One situation, and then we kind of have a different mindset that we apply at home. And I think, like, very quickly you will be humbled by the things that you don't know about that are sort of right in your backyard.
- [17:09]
Elise Hu
What is it about our mindset that changes when we go very, very far away? And how would you recommend we take that mindset from far away and apply it in our own rose gardens or in our own backyards?
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Jenny Odell
I think it has just a lot
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to do with what you're looking for,
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and what you're looking for has to do with what you think you're doing.
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Elise Hu
Jenny reminds us that you don't have to pack a bag at all to see a place with new eyes. And that's our last tip. Take that fresh eyes mindset home. You can take a different way to work, find a new jogging route, or just take a moment to appreciate the view from your own porch a little longer.
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Jenny Odell
If you think you're on vacation, then you are basically setting out to experience leisure time, right?
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Like that's your goal.
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I mean, people travel in different ways. It Depends on your job. But you're probably working. Like you have a routine where you get up at a certain time and you maybe take the same train and you go to the same place. It's like, you know, maybe you haven't had a day in a long time where you were in your own neighborhood, but you weren't trying to work. And so you didn't have that kind of framework. So I just think I. I mean, I've just been surprised in my own experience where if you take what you're trying to do on vacation, which is to not work and experience new things and you just do that at home, it will completely change the things that you notice and that you perceive.
- [18:36]
Elise Hu
Just go outside and walk around, walk aimlessly, like Jenny o' Dell does.
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Jenny Odell
You go outside and you're like, I don't even know what I'm looking for. I'm looking for anything. Then you will see anything. Like you'll see all of these things. Outside of the categories of what you're
- [18:48]
usually looking for,
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Elise Hu
what kind of value have you derived from just observing your surroundings, whether you're far away or close to home?
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Jenny Odell
I think that it's just enlarged my capacity to be surprised. I think that's almost like a faculty that you exercise. And it can be narrow or it can be wide, and I think you can widen it on purpose.
- [19:12]
Elise Hu
Curiosity can open up new worlds to us.
- [19:15]
Jenny Odell
It just becomes very quickly evident that I will never really get to the bottom of things that I'm observing. And that is such a delightful feeling. And it's so different from consuming a product. It's also different from looking things up online where the answer is yes or no. It's kind of the opposite of that. It's like a seemingly simple point that opens onto kind of infinity. As long as you're willing to go down that path. I'm sort of addicted to the feeling of curiosity. And so it's been really wonderful for me to find out that I can have that anywhere.
- [19:54]
Elise Hu
This was a heady episode packed with meaning. So let's review the takeaways from Tori, who sailed around the world for a few years, and Jenny, who gets the soul boosting benefits of travel without leaving home. Takeaway 1 Meaning is what you make it. A meaningful time isn't necessarily a good time or a bad time. You bring the context to your experiences, and that might not be the postcard version of a place.
- [20:18]
Tori Desroche
It doesn't have to be anything apart from what you make it.
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Elise Hu
Tip number two to finding fulfillment. Never stop being slightly afraid you realize
- [20:26]
Tori Desroche
the world isn't as scary as maybe you come to believe, and that just enriches my life and my experience of life.
- [20:36]
Elise Hu
So engineer your travels so that you're doing things scare you a little. 3. Remember the why being open to perspective and surprise is a good frame takeaway 4 is treat your travel as an experience, not as a product to simply
- [20:50]
Jenny Odell
snap some pictures of, leaving enough unplanned space to acknowledge that the the meaning is going to come from the place, not from you ahead of time planning
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Elise Hu
your trip takeaway 5. Seek out what makes the place you're in truly different from the last place you were in.
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Jenny Odell
Some of it has to do with just observation.
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Elise Hu
Do more than just see a place be there. And finally, you don't have to leave home to be transformed. Bring the open perspective you have on a trip to your daily experiences. That's it for this Life Kit on Meaningful Travel. For more NPR Life Kit, check out other episodes in this guide. There's one on navigating group travel, which without ruining your relationships, and another on logistics, planning and packing like a pro. If you like what you hear, make sure to check out our other Life kit guides@npr.org lifekit and while you're there, subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss anything. We've got more guides coming every month on all sorts of topics. In the meantime, here's our random tip. Get outside nature. It's full of surprises.
- [21:51]
Jenny Odell
Yeah, we have a vet. Some yard work weed whacker person just appeared. It's authentic rose garden.
- [22:00]
Elise Hu
I'm Elise Hu. Thanks for listening.
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Jenny Odell
Americans kinda owe recycling to the mafia and a huge mistake by this guy.
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Garbage in New York that was like a controlled substance. There was a cartel that controlled the flow of garbage.
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Why we started recycling on NPR's Planet
- [22:23]
Commercial Announcer
Money podcast, this message comes from American Home Shield. An AHS home warranty helps protect your major home systems and appliances, whether they're brand new or part of your home's history. A home warranty is different than homeowner's insurance, which covers things that might happen like fire, theft or storm damage. A home warranty covers what will happen, like normal wear and tear on the items you use every day, like your oven, fridge, AC and plumbing. American Home Shield will fix a covered item when it breaks down and if they can't repair it, they'll replace it. American Home Shield don't worry, be warranty. Get 20% off all plans@ahs.com NPR and see promo details. See ahs.com contracts for coverage details, including service fees, limitations and exclusions.