This was published 5 years ago
Holiday secrets from the experts: The holidays travel writers don't tell you about
Iran is worth raving about.Credit: Alamy
Do you even go on holidays? Or do you just stay at home?
I get asked that a lot. It makes sense, I guess. When your job is travelling, when you spend your life going through all of those security lines and waiting for all of those flights and battling through all of those foreign places; when you go to beautiful destinations and have great experiences and often not have to pay for them, would you really want to travel again in your spare time?
Maybe for some people who travel for a living, the idea of a holiday is to stay at home. Maybe downtime, for some people, is what you need when your job is all up time.
Trastevere in Rome is a great place for food.Credit: Alamy
But I'm not one of those people.
My holidays involve travel. They involve going to the places I truly love, or the ones I've always wanted to visit. They involve checking out from the idea of what will make a good story, and doing things that won't necessarily appeal to newspaper editors or even the general public. They involve just doing the things I enjoy.
I like to go on journeys when I travel for myself. I like to take things pretty slow, to have an idea of an end point and a time I'd like to reach there, but to leave everything else open, to take away the pressure of a set itinerary and just see how things go.
Lake Titicaca in Bolivia.Credit: Alamy
The locations vary. There's something great about getting off the beaten track, but I'm also fine with staying on it. I've had as much fun in Rome as I have in Can Tho, Vietnam. My partner and I both love food, but we also recognise that there's more to life than just stuffing your face, so we try to do one trip that's food focused, and then one trip that's not. And repeat.
The best holiday I've ever been on was a few years ago, driving a kitted-out Hilux around southern Africa. My partner and I drove and camped our way around South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, checking out game parks, four-wheel-driving through remote terrain, sleeping under the stars. That's not a popular trip. Editors didn't clamour to hear that story.
Another recent highlight was riding a scooter around the Mekong Delta, taking a week to just cruise around through rural areas, spending nights in dodgy guesthouses, eating meals from local markets, stopping wherever we felt like it at "ca phe vongs": small roadside coffeeshops with hammocks for weary riders.
That, too, was not a travel editor-friendly holiday. Most people don't want stories about riding scooters through insane Vietnamese traffic. It's a niche journey. A fairly dangerous one, too. You do something like that purely for yourself, purely for the thrill. No one was ever going to suggest I do it for work.
I've also done a few trips on the Trans-Siberian as holidays, both of which have been lifetime highlights. I've gone overland through Bolivia and Peru with a few mates and loved it. I've spent a fortnight exploring Iran and I've been raving about it ever since.
But my holidays aren't always crazy adventures. There's just as much fun to be had in single cities, in staying in one spot and leaving enough time to get to know places properly, rather than going through the whirlwind that the hunt for travel stories seems to engender.
I have a hit list of five or six cities that I know and love, and plan to regularly return to, to spend a week or a month and just enjoy. Rome is one of them. Tokyo is another. Then add in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Lisbon.
That's another great way to have a holiday: travel without moving. Rent an apartment and sink yourself into local life. Forgo the desire to visit proper tourist attractions – the things you might be expected to mention in a travel story – and instead just exist, just go to cafes and wander streets and appreciate all that's good and interesting and fun.
So yes, I do go on holidays. I go on as many holidays as I possibly can, to as many different places, to experience as many different things. Whether you work in the industry or not – if you really love travel, there's no better way to spend your time.
What's your favourite style of travel? Do you travel a lot for work? Does the thought of going to an airport for your leisure time still appeal to you?
Instagram: Instagram.com/bengroundwater
See also: Ten travel items I never leave home without
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