About this episode

This episode provides thirty practical tips for traveling beyond crowded tourist spots and emphasizes the importance of experiencing fewer places more deeply.

Thirty concrete tricks for finding the places the crowds never reach - and for breaking the habit of collecting countries like stamps. I have one ugly habit. When I arrive somewhere everyone is photographing, I get an irresistible urge to walk in exactly the opposite direction. It’s not a pose. It’s more that over the years I’ve figured out one simple thing - the best of any place almost never stands in a queue. Travel has turned into a strange discipline over the past decade. We collect places like stamps. Ten cities in seven days, each one ticked off, photographed, uploaded. And then we come home exhausted and, oddly enough, remember almost nothing. Because we were never anywhere longer than one espresso and one photo in front of the right fountain - and, honestly, we often didn’t experience anything interesting at all. This special is about the opposite. It’s a collection of concrete, usable tricks. One idea ties them together: fewer places, more experiences. And a bit of nerve to go against the current. So let’s get to it. Before you even set off 1. The twenty-percent rule. The traveller and writer Eric Weiner put it beautifully: estimate how much time you reasonably need in…

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