I used to save screenshots of Santorini sunsets like they were prophecies. Blue domes, white walls, that specific shade of Aegean that makes you understand why the Greeks needed so many words for blue. My Pinterest board labeled “Someday” looked like every other millennial’s—a parade of Parisian cafés and Tuscan vineyards, Amsterdam canals and Barcelona basilicas.

Then I spent three weeks in Lombok, Indonesia, learning to surf from a guy named Wayan who’d never left his island but spoke four languages and could read ocean currents like sheet music. One night, sitting on the beach eating grilled corn and watching phosphorescence dance in the waves, I realized my European dream trip wasn’t actually mine. It was inherited, like my grandmother’s china—beautiful, valuable, but designed for someone else’s table.

The “civilization starts here” myth

Last month in Vientiane, I watched the morning alms ceremony—hundreds of monks in saffron robes collecting offerings in silence while the city held its breath. A French tourist next to me whispered about how “untouched” it all was, how “authentic.” I thought about the 14th-century stupas we’d passed, the Sanskrit inscriptions older than Notre Dame.

The myth goes like this: real culture lives in European museums and monuments. Everything else is either derivative or developing. It’s why we say “discovered” when Europeans showed up places where millions already lived. It’s why my high school history textbook devoted one chapter to “The Rest of the World.”

But spend a day at Angkor Wat watching sunrise paint thousand-year-old faces gold, or join the evening crowds at Borobudur in Java where Buddhist pilgrims have climbed stone steps for twelve centuries. Walk through Old Damascus where they’ve been making rose water the same way since before England had a name. Culture doesn’t radiate from a single source. It blooms wherever humans gather long enough to need beauty.

The convenience gospel

“But it’s just easier,” my coworker said, defending her fourth trip to Italy. “Everyone speaks English. The trains run on time. You know what you’re getting.”

Sure. And my neighborhood Chipotle is easier than the Salvadoran place where you have to point at what you want and hope. Ease is overrated.

I learned this trying to buy train tickets in rural Maharashtra, India. The booking office had closed early (cricket match), the online system required an Indian phone number, and the station master spoke a Hindi dialect Google Translate had never heard of. It took three hours, two cups of chai, and a crowd of increasingly invested strangers to get me on the right train. When I finally collapsed into my seat, an elderly woman opposite shared her tiffin lunch with me—okra curry, chapati still warm, pickled mango that made my eyes water.

The best travel stories start with “everything went wrong.” They’re born from the gap between what you planned and what actually happened. When you optimize for convenience, you optimize away the possibility of surprise. You get efficiency where you needed alchemy.

In Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, our jeep broke down between nowhere and nowhere else. We spent the night in a nomad family’s ger, learning to play sheep ankle bones while fermented mare’s milk got passed around. No TripAdvisor reviews. No WiFi. No common language beyond laughter and hand gestures. Also, no moment from my five trips to Europe that felt half as real.

The Instagram industrial complex

We all know this one, but knowing and doing occupy different continents. The cycle goes: see aspirational photo, save aspirational photo, recreate aspirational photo, post aspirational photo, perpetuate aspirational photo. What gets lost is the possibility that you might want something different than what photographs well.

I watched it happen at Fushimi Inari in Kyoto. Thousands of vermillion torii gates climbing a mountain—legitimately spectacular. Also: legitimate chaos. Everyone hunting for that one shot where it looks like you’re alone in a tunnel of sacred architecture. Meanwhile, if you turned left at the second shrine and climbed the unmarked path, you’d find smaller shrines where locals still leave offerings, where moss grows thick on stone foxes, where you can actually hear what silence sounds like in a sacred space.

The most-photographed places on earth are starting to look more like photo sets than destinations. Dubrovnik installed surveillance systems to monitor crowds and is implementing visitor restrictions. Iceland had to close Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon multiple times because Instagram tourism was literally loving it to death. When we travel for the image rather than the experience, we turn places into backdrops and ourselves into props.

The scarcity scam

“Europe’s not going anywhere,” I told my mom when she asked about my upcoming trip to Kyrgyzstan.

“But what if something happens?” she countered. “What if you can’t travel later?”

The anxiety is real but the logic is backwards. The Parthenon has survived 2,500 years—it’ll make it through your thirties. But languages disappear at a rate of one every two weeks. Whole islands are planning their evacuations. The last Sumatran rhinos struggle to find mates across fragmented forests.

This isn’t disaster tourism—it’s recognition that the world’s most irreplaceable experiences aren’t in climate-controlled museums. They’re in places where modernity arrives like a tide, transforming everything it touches. The throat singers in Tuva, the stilt villages in Brunei, the sea nomads of Myanmar who can see underwater—these aren’t tourist attractions. They’re ways of being human that won’t exist in a generation.

The comfort zone complex

“I just want to relax,” says everyone defending their beach resort choice. Fair. Modern life is exhausting. But here’s what I’ve noticed: the relaxation that comes from confirming what you already know fades faster than your tan. The energy that comes from having your assumptions scrambled? That stays.

In Tbilisi, I got spectacularly lost trying to find a wine bar and ended up at a family birthday party in someone’s garage. Three hours later, I knew four toasts in Georgian, had strong opinions about khachapuri styles, and understood why they call it the birthplace of wine. My nervous system was definitely activated. Also: I felt more alive than I had in months.

Comfort is overrated as a travel goal. You can be comfortable at home, probably more cheaply. What you can’t get at home is the specific disorientation of being the only person in a room who doesn’t understand the joke, followed by the specific joy of eventually getting it. You can’t get the muscle memory of navigating by landmarks instead of apps, or the pride of successfully ordering dinner using only gestures and goodwill.

The timeline myth

“First Europe,” the mental map goes. “Then maybe Southeast Asia. Save Africa and South America for when I’m more experienced.”

Experienced at what? Navigating metro systems? Reading Roman numerals? There’s no prerequisite course for curiosity. No correct order for wonder.

I met a 19-year-old from Denmark in Kigali who’d chosen Rwanda for her first solo trip. “Everyone said I was crazy,” she laughed, feeding banana to a baby gorilla at a conservation center. “But I figured if I could handle Copenhagen winters, I could handle anything.” She was planning to study sustainable agriculture, wanted to see Rwanda’s farming innovations firsthand. Made more sense than starting with the Eiffel Tower.

The idea that travel has a difficulty setting—with Europe on “easy” and everywhere else on “advanced”—is both condescending and limiting. It assumes the goal is smooth consumption rather than genuine exchange. It treats the majority of the world like the travel equivalent of post-game content.

What’s left when the myths fall away

Here’s what I’m not saying: skip Europe. I’m heading to Slovenia next month to hike the Julian Alps, and I’ll probably cry when I finally see the Northern Lights in Norway. Europe holds legitimate wonders, stories worth hearing, people worth meeting.

What I am saying: interrogate the reflex. When you picture your dream trip, whose dream are you dreaming? When you save for someday, what assumptions are you saving alongside the money?

Because here’s what waits beyond the myths: night markets in Luang Prabang where teenagers sell crafts to pay for university. Desert libraries in Mauritania where families guard manuscripts older than printing presses. Surf breaks in El Salvador where the civil war ended but the waves didn’t. Tea ceremonies in Kyoto where silence costs more than words.

The world is wider than your Pinterest board. Wider than the “safe” list your parents emailed. Wider than the places that look good in square format. Wide enough that you could spend your whole life traveling and never see the same sunset twice, never taste the same bread, never run out of strangers who become friends who become reasons to return.

Your dream trip is still valid. But maybe it’s time to dream in more colors.