Does your ultimate travelling experience include things like 5-star restaurants, plush accomodations, boutique private tours, chauffered Maseratis, movie stars, and 24-7 pampering?
Where everything goes just like you’ve imagined it?
Where the world is your oyster and you are top of the world and you mix all the metaphors you want?
Well if that’s the case, then I have no idea what you are doing reading my blog and I suggest you visit this travel company to make your vacation arrangements. Thank you for visiting IRLXD.
For those of you still reading, let’s talk Struggle Travel.
What is Struggle Travel?
“Struggle Travel” (coined for me by my friend Matt) is travel that is designed to be hard and unpredictable. It is usually characterized by one or more (or if you’re lucky, all) of the following:
- A destination of questionable touristic value.
- Transport that is uncomfortable in various ways.
- The possibility that you will get delayed in terrible places for hours or days.
- The inability to effectively communicate with local people.
- Running out of food or water when you really want some and can’t find any.
- Poorly cleaned bathrooms!
- Highly unconventional sleeping arrangements.
- Being very very lost.
Struggle Travel Is Not “Adventure Sports Travel”
Struggle travel is definitely an adventure, but it’s not to be confused with the sort of travel where people carry bikes up the Himalayas and then paraglide them down to the ocean to wrestle sharks. You don’t have to be an athlete or have any physical ability whatsoever. Instead, it’s about getting yourself into a pointless and unpredictable situation you don’t like and then trying to find your way out of it.
It’s sort of like setting up an obstacle course where you get to meet new people and earn interesting stories.
Each person defines it themselves. For some it means traipsing through the Amazon for months in order to find the River of Doubt or hiking the Appalachian Trail at age 67 in a pair of canvas sneakers while living off the land or hitchhiking Round Ireland With a Fridge.
For others it just means spending a weekend doing their first solo-travel experience in an unfamiliar city.
Why Struggle Travel?
Here’s some of the benefits of Struggle Travel:
- A better appreciation for the randomness of the universe. You are putting a lot of faith in things just working out. (And they usually do).
- Meeting locals. Who are almost always friendly. People are friendly to hapless idiots who find themselves out of food and water on their way to a place that no one thinks is interesting. As a non-struggle travel vacationer, if one local helps you fix a flat you never forget it. But as a struggle traveler, you might have 100 flats! Think about that for a while.
- A sense of accomplishment. Getting through something is something you can look back on when you have to go through something else. I think this is why people climb mountains and kayak down the nile and hike across the Gobi. You don’t have to go to all the trouble of training, though. Instead you can just make a few poor decisions up front and destiny will take care of the rest!
- Humor. There’s a special wonderful laughter that comes out when you know you’re screwed and it’s your fault.
- Accepting what is. “Well the next bus doesn’t come for a few days. Hope you brought some food.” Resignation can paradoxically feel like mindful freedom and give space for zenful acceptance.
- Stories to tell. No one wants to hear another travel story about how Cabo was so incredible. They want to hear about how you were stuck on the side of the road in the desert and what you thought was your last bottle of water turned out to be a bottle of cooking oil because the label was in a language you don’t understand.
- Meeting other like-minded travelers. Wherever you’re stuck it’s likely that at least one other traveler will come along as you wait a week for the boat or whatever to finally come pick you up. You will have a lot in common with this person because you both have the same whatever the hell is wrong with you.
Some Examples of Struggle Travel
Maybe you’re thinking, “Wow, Mike. This struggle travel seems right for me. But do you have some real-life examples you could tell me about. Maybe a video or something?”
You’re in luck.
Video
Trabant Trek and Wreck Treck
There’s a lot I could say about these two shows. If you are friends with me, you know this.
The general premise of each show is this: a group of people (mostly in their 20s and 30s) buy $300 junky cars in western Europe and drive them to faraway places over many months. “Trabant Trek” went from Budapest to Cambodia. “Wreck Treck” went from Berlin to South Africa.
Their struggles include:
- Constant breakdowns of at least one of their four vehicles.
- Many hangovers
- Stomach illness.
- Constant breakdowns of at least one of their four vehicles.
- Malaria
- Getting detained at the border for days or weeks.
- Having visas rejected ,requiring them to instead drive around the outside of a country instead of through it.
- Having to wait for a caravan to lead them through guerilla territory.
- Constant breakdowns of at least one of their four vehicles.
- Lack of funds, food, water, etc.
- Completely uncomfortable cars that lack heat in the himalayas and AC in the desert.
- Many days of continuous 24-hour driving.
- All the usual fights argument, etc.
The main criticism of the show from reviewers is that so many of the people in the show act like jerks while the nice people in the show just get sh*t on by them. That’s a fair charge and I’ll admit, it does make it hard to watch at points. But rest assured that you will be offered many opportunities to feel shaudenfreud toward the jerks. This journey is insanely painful.
Around The Next Bend
Two candadian guys buy an inflatable raft and fly it to India, determined to row the length of the Ganges. They have never rowed before. What could go wrong? This is a delightful show.
There’s no camera crew.
In the first episode (first day) alone (sorry spoilers):
- They arrive in India to find out they are starting in low season for the river. It is very shallow and very slow.
- The slow moving river is filled with sewage and the burned corpses sent down the river during funeral services.
- Their GPS stops working.
- They accidentally bump some of their clothes into the sewage-filled water.
- At night, they can’t see well and make camp on something the presume is either solid ground or a big pile of garbage.
This show is awesome. Unlike the Trabant shows, both these guys are pretty likeable and don’t (to the camera) get into many fights with each other.
A few years ago these guys went on another trip where they ride a tuk-tuk across South America from top to bottom. I eagerly await its release.
Emergency in Tajikistan
I’ve forgotten most of the details of this one other than I liked it and this guy was nuts. One man drives an ambulance from London to Tajikstan.
The Grand Tour
Three middle aged guys that like to talk about cars a lot go on trips that are mildly struggle-filled.
I like these guys and their show. I appreciate some of their discomfort – it’s real. But there’s a professional film crew with them and it’s clear much of the dialog and troubles have been pre-planned. It takes away something for me knowing that they will never find themselves up a creek without a dozen support crew paddles, but they definitely do some stuff along the way that seems sufficiently painful.
I recommend the episode where they drive across Namibia.
Dark Tourist
“Dark Tourism” is generally defined as travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy. Depending on the location, it can be frowned upon. I liked this show and much of it was in the vein of what I’d call struggle travel.
Dumball
This is a documentary on The Dumball one of many “banger rallys“. The usual premise is get a team, buy a $300 car, come up with theme, then drive with other rallyers to predetermined destinations while trying to win points for doing challenges along the way.
On the “to watch” list:
10 MPH – A documentary about riding a Segway across America.
Youtube has many amateur struggle travel documentaries. Here’s a few I want to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nua7anYbSsc
https://www.globalconvoy.com/watch-documentary
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LVhJH_9cT2XKp0VAfsKOQ
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXulruMI7BHj3kGyosNa0jA
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074597/ (Gumball 1976)
Books
There’s loads of books but these are some of my favorites.
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey Teddy was nuts.
Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail. We’re all a bunch of “pantywaists” according to this 67 walking machine.
Round Ireland With a Fridge. A man makes a drunken bet to hitchhike around Ireland with a refridgerator.
The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer’s Search for Meaning in the Great Depression. An attempt to walk around the world backwards in the middle of the Great Depression.