Finding your own way to get lost

The rush of adrenaline hits your senses. The anticipation of the possibility of discovering something you’ve never seen before, mixed with the anxiety of not knowing what lays around the corner creates a unique rush.

But getting lost while traveling is something that, ironically, requires planning ... and an awareness and concern for your own safety.

The New York Times’ former “Frugal Traveler,” Matt Gross, a few months ago launched a new series dubbed “Getting Lost.” Gross chronicles his attempts to get lost while traveling. His first stop was Morocco, second was Ireland.

“I’ve lately been wondering, how does it feel truly not to know where you are? Are the guidebooks, GPS devices and Internet forums pointing us in the wrong direction? In our efforts to figure out where we’re going, have we lost something more important?

“Hence this new series, ‘Getting Lost,’ in which every few months I will try to lose my way all over the globe, from developing-world megalopolises to European capitals, from American sprawl to Asian archipelagos. (For the moment, I’ll avoid deep wilderness and deserts; I want to survive.) It’s a challenge that requires special preparation — that is, nonpreparation. In the past, I’ve researched destinations to death, zooming deep into Google Maps and uncovering unusual restaurants in the darkest corners of the Web. Now I am avoiding maps. I am shying away from Chowhound and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum; I will not ask my Facebook friends who they know in Moscow or Addis Ababa.

“I am, in short, trying to break free of the constraints of modern travel, of a culture in which every minute is rigorously planned, and we grade destinations based on how they live up to our expectations. I want to have no expectations. I plan to show up with neither hotel reservation nor guidebook; instead of devising my own itinerary, I will let the place itself guide me, and in doing so, I will, I hope, find myself caught up in moments I never could have imagined,” Gross writes.

Sure it sounds glamorous and exciting — coming to a place without any plans in hand. Aimlessly exploring your surroundings and stumbling upon hidden gems. Yeah it’s great, if the NY Times is paying you big bucks to write about it.

But what about for all of us other travelers who aren’t getting big paychecks to travel. Who simply do it because we love it and who don’t have the kind of cash to throw down for a flight at the last minute or a hotel room that will cost double or triple because we didn’t have a reservation.

Prague was beautiful at the turn of any and every corner

I’m not saying that it’s necessary to plan out every detail of your itinerary. Some of my best travel experiences came by wandering around and letting my instincts guide which way I turned at the next corner. Wandering rather aimlessly through the streets of Prague allowed me to see much more of that beautiful city than I would have had I stuck to the main streets and mapped out every step.

However, that was Prague; not Morocco. Depending on where you’re traveling, safety becomes a greater concern. Well, safety’s always a concern, especially for a female solo traveler, but walking around, say, London after sunset is far less dangerous (depending on what neighborhood you’re in, of course) than generally wandering around Morocco by yourself at night. That sentiment also was expressed in a response letter to Gross’ first “Getting Lost” column.

“In ‘Lost in Tangier,’ Matt Gross romanticizes ‘getting lost’ in Tangier’s medina. He makes the journey seem eminently doable for a solo traveler. He fails to mention that this may be much more difficult for a woman traveling alone. I lived in Morocco for eight months on a Fulbright grant, and traveled quite a bit around the country. In Tangier, like many cities I visited in Morocco, it was not advisable to be out alone at night if you were not a male or accompanied by one. Come-ons aloud and whispered, being followed in cars, the occasional grab: none of these are much fun. Matt Gross, as a man traveling alone, perhaps did not think about any of this as none of it happened to him, or perhaps he did not think to ask any of the women he met,” writes Alma Rachel Heckman of Los Angeles.

Though it's a very famous Dublin landmark, my friends and I
found Temple Bar by simply wandering the street

In his second installment of “Getting Lost,” Gross writes about driving around Ireland. One aspect of his solo travel that he focuses on is the loneliness of it. As a seasoned traveler, Gross has developed exceptional friend-making skills. I have those as well. It’s that inner thing that lets you strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to you on the plane, or the bus, or at the bar. That need to connect with another traveler and share your experience with someone as excited to be there as you are.

But there is something to be said about traveling alone. Not being responsible to anyone else or having to go discover something you don’t really care about because the person you’re with wants to see it. But I wrote about that already ...

Getting back to getting lost: “Maybe I was just grazing the surface of Ireland, failing to penetrate to its core, but when the surface is as raw and gorgeous as it is in Kerry, and when you never know when you’ll stumble on a Martine’s or the Calvinists, and when, despite everything that’s happened before, good and bad, you trust the road to take you where it will, sometimes the surface suffices,” Gross writes in “Lost in Ireland.”

Yes, I’m sure that grazing the surface of a country as beautiful as Ireland can be more than enough for someone who can afford to go back time after time. But for someone like me, who needs to take full advantage of every travel opportunity (both due to time and monetary concerns), just grazing the surface often is not enough. Who knows how many more times I’ll be able to go back to a place like Egypt or India, if ever again. For my own, personal travel satisfaction — to alleviate that damn bite as much as possible until it starts itching again — I need to plan out a way to see as much of a city, country and/or continent as I can.

Even Gross, who is trying to get lost on his travels, tacks on to the end of his piece this: “Even if you’re trying to get lost, it’s OK to have some touchstones. And don’t worry, just because you have these addresses doesn’t mean they’ll be easy to find.”

In the end, getting lost in a city can be a blast. You can discover hidden gems that may not be on that map your eyes are glued to otherwise. But remember that your safety comes first. And planning, even if it’s just a basic skeleton of an itinerary, is not necessarily a bad thing. Often, it’s what makes a trip the most worthwhile.