I am lying on a massage table somewhere far, far away. Two horses hover beside me. A woman speaks to me in tongues while performing reiki. I am subsequently bidden to release my ancestral trauma by setting fire to some crumpled paper in a bowl. I do so with gusto. I shall be transformed. This, I am told, is the path to a new, elevated version of myself—a version that is finally free from the baggage of my daily existence.
I carry this gleeful, hopeful sentiment within me on the plane home. I feel light and free; my heart is filled with hope. But the reality of my return is jarring. The very next day, I suffer a monumental insult from someone I considered a friend, a blow that lands with all the subtlety of a lead weight. Three months on, I am just as skint and single as I ever was—and my promised "gym body" hasn’t arrived either. As I stare down the barrel of the Piccadilly line tunnel at Covent Garden for the 8,000th time, it appears my requested manifestations haven’t arrived on cue. Given the retreat carried a $25,000-odd price tag, I’d have expected the universe to put me in the skip-the-queue line for psychic fulfilment.
I am not alone in hoping for something to change post-holiday. Many of us buy into the idea of a break away as a total reset, a chance to usher in a new iteration of ourselves. It’s a cliché that young people head off to "find themselves" on a gap year for a reason, but that search for identity has now permeated every demographic. We treat travel not as a leisure activity, but as a therapeutic intervention.
"When we’ve invested a lot of meaning into a holiday, we can start to expect that we’ll come back as a different version of ourselves," says Dr. Jade Thomas of Luxe Psychology Practice. "But we’re returning to the same job, responsibilities, relationships, and potentially the same stressors. So there can be quite a stark contrast between how we felt in that environment and what we’re returning to."
Well, quite. This isn’t even the first time I’ve tried to usher in a new transformative era for my life by attempting to escape it. Last year, I spent three days in India being rubbed from head to toe in oil by two women in tandem. Naked. In my defense, the retreat came recommended by Queen Camilla and Sting. But after swallowing my prescribed homeopathic pills upon return, I was still getting ghosted by men on apps all the same. The Ayurveda must not have come across especially strongly over Hinge.
In her critique of modern tourism for The New Yorker, writer Agnes Callard argued that travel is frequently an exercise in self-deception. We convince ourselves that moving our bodies through physical space alters who we are when, in reality, most travelers simply perform uncharacteristic habits for seven days—buying local trinkets, eating unusual cuisine, and pretending to care about regional flora—before returning to their exact baseline. Her conclusion? Stop moving. Be happy at home.
Really, I don’t agree. As a journalist at Traveler, I’ve had great fortune to visit some of the most wondrous locations on Earth. I’ve galloped across the Kenyan plains on horseback, snorkeled in the Maldives, and seen the cherry blossoms fall in South Korea. I’ve slept in a tent on the top of the Bighorn Mountains and laid down under the world’s starriest skies. I cherish these experiences deeply. To visit these places has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.
But it’s true that, in recent years, travel has undergone an exhausting promotion. Somewhere along the line, a simple holiday stopped being enough. Modern tourism demands that journeys should now double as a spiritual reckoning or a personal renaissance. A crop of innovative retreats designed to solve all ills now exists, incorporating everything from kinesiology and psychedelics to juice cleanses, breathwork, and EMDR, all proffering one key promise: you shall return home anew.
This is inevitably seductive to those who feel a level of discontent. At least, it is for me. I’ve been through the mill with dating over the last two years, putting myself out there again and again only to have a string of experiences leave me feeling that, somehow, I’m not enough as I am. Could it be that the key to unlocking my highest, most worthy self is as simple as a change of scenery?
"Switching environments can absolutely influence how we feel. Novelty, anticipation, and a break from routine can all temporarily boost our mood," says Dr. Jade. "But if the underlying dissatisfaction is coming from something internal, such as stress, low self-esteem, anxiety, or feeling unfulfilled, changing our physical location doesn’t necessarily alter the pattern."
Since returning home from my latest retreat, my love life, waistline, and bank balance have all remained resolutely the same. But there has been one obvious change: I’ve had another truly wonderful trip, with a new set of memories to cherish forever. It would be a monumental disservice to the experience to feel anything other than grateful. To expect a stretch of foreign sand to usher in a whole new reality for every tourist who dips their toes in the sea is asking a lot of a beautiful view.
It’s not the only way the weight of expectation gets us down. These days, social media algorithms mean that we can pre-script our trips down to the minute; we know exactly what the sunset will look like, which local restaurant serves the most photo-worthy pasta, and which exact vantage point yields the best view of the coastline. But when you’ve paid explicitly to see the sunrise from the top of Mount Batur, a cloudy morning isn’t simply a cloudy morning, but a crushing disappointment. We have turned the unpredictability of travel into a failed transaction.
"There can be a strange paradox where the attempt to achieve a particular emotional state can actually take us further away from it," says Dr. Jade. "Sometimes we need to stop asking ourselves whether we’re having a good time and actually just have the experience."
So, I am officially giving myself permission to step off the self-improvement treadmill while on holiday. Can’t we all just sit and enjoy the view for a while—cloudy as it may be? Because some of my best travel experiences have been unplanned. The moments that truly stay with me were never written into an itinerary: getting caught in an unexpected downpour in Miami, which turned into an impromptu cinema trip with a stranger, or a freezing jump into the creek when the showers ran dry at a Wyoming campsite. I’ll not stop traveling, or exploring, or enjoying the thrill of trying something new. But I want to do it for the love of discovery, rather than to reap some intangible benefit or to "fix" the parts of my life that aren’t actually broken.
"You don’t need to have a breakthrough while looking at a beautiful sunset," says Dr. Jade. "You can just sit there and think, ‘This is really nice.’"
Back in London, I am again resurrecting my online dating profile. I fill it with my most interesting travel photos—each with a story, all designed to wow. This is me at my most alive; my Best Self. I send it to ChatGPT for a final opinion.
"You are educated and attractive; you clearly live a full and vibrant life," came the reply. "But a string of photos in glamorous locations could read as intimidating to potential matches."
It continued: "Consider swapping some out for a couple of you at home."
Perhaps that is the ultimate lesson. Whether we are on a mountain peak in Asia or riding the London Underground, we are the same people. The travel is not the cure; it is merely the scenery. And sometimes, the most beautiful view is the one we find right where we are, without the pressure of having to become someone else.
