Have We Accidentally Removed Adventure from Travel?

Over the past years, Harm has realised that his thoughts about travel have changed profoundly. Somewhere along the way, he began to wonder whether we have made travel too easy, too predictable—and in doing so, lost a little of what made it so magical in the first place.

This is the first in a series of reflections we call Travel Reinvented. Its supposed to tell you a bit about how we see the World at Wild Tracks Moto.

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We live in the easiest time in history to travel.

Before leaving home, we already know where we’ll sleep. We know what the room looks like because we’ve seen a hundred photos. We know the menu because it’s online. We know which viewpoints are “worth it,” which cafés are “authentic,” and which roads to avoid because someone else has already reviewed them.

Our phones tell us where to go, what to expect, and how long it will take.

If a road is closed, we know before we reach it.

If the weather changes, we’re notified.

If a restaurant disappoints us, we leave a review before dessert arrives.

We’ve become incredibly good at removing uncertainty.

Ironically, uncertainty was once the very reason we travelled.

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For most of human history, a journey meant accepting that you didn’t know exactly what would happen next.

You might meet people who would change your life.

You might get lost.

You might discover places that weren’t in any guidebook.

You might fail.

You might have to solve problems with complete strangers who didn’t speak your language.

Looking back, these moments are rarely remembered as inconveniences.

They become the stories we tell for the rest of our lives.

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Somewhere along the way, travel slowly transformed into consumption.

Instead of experiencing a place, we collect it.

We collect passport stamps.

We collect photographs.

We collect famous viewpoints.

Sometimes we collect countries so quickly that we hardly remember the people who lived there.

The destination has become the product.

The journey has become logistics.

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Motorcycling taught me something very different.

For more than 100,000 kilometres, I travelled on a Royal Enfield Classic through Europe and Latin America.

It wasn’t the fastest motorcycle.

It certainly wasn’t the most technologically advanced.

It broke down occasionally.

It forced me to slow down.

At the time, I sometimes wished for something bigger, faster and more comfortable.

Today, I’m grateful I didn’t have it.

Because every limitation created opportunities.

When the bike stopped, people stopped too.

Mechanics became friends.

Families invited me into their homes.

Children asked questions.

Conversations happened that would never have happened through the closed window of a modern SUV.

The motorcycle wasn’t simply transportation.

It became an invitation.

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Adventure isn’t found where the road becomes difficult.

Adventure begins where certainty ends.

It starts the moment you can no longer control everything.

When the weather refuses to cooperate.

When the ferry doesn’t leave.

When the border closes.

When you realise your carefully constructed plan no longer exists.

Some people see these moments as failures.

Years later, they become the highlights.

Nobody sits around a campfire talking about the hotel check-in that went exactly as expected.

They remember the night the engine died.

The family that offered a place to sleep.

The storm they laughed about afterwards.

The wrong turn that became the best decision of the trip.

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The tourism industry, through no bad intention, has become exceptionally good at removing exactly these moments.

Everything is optimised.

Everything is predictable.

Everything is efficient.

The result is comfortable.

But comfort and adventure have never been close relatives.

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This doesn’t mean travel should be reckless.

Preparation matters.

Experience matters.

Safety matters.

The goal isn’t to replace planning with chaos.

The goal is simply to leave enough room for life to interrupt the plan.

Because that’s where the magic usually lives.

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Perhaps this is why we still choose simple motorcycles.

Not because modern adventure bikes are bad.

They’re extraordinary machines.

But they sometimes promise something impossible:

That adventure can be engineered.

It can’t.

Adventure has never lived inside the motorcycle.

It lives inside uncertainty.

Inside curiosity.

Inside the willingness to say yes when the road suddenly asks a different question than the one you prepared for.

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Maybe we don’t need more destinations.

Maybe we need fewer certainties.

Maybe the purpose of travel was never to escape home.

Maybe it was to rediscover the version of ourselves that only appears when life stops following the itinerary.

If that happens, even for a single afternoon, the journey has already been worth it.

And perhaps that’s what travel was always meant to be.