Why I Stopped Chasing Bucket-List Destinations

For most of my twenties, I traveled like I was collecting stamps. Patagonia. Iceland. The Inca Trail. Each one a milestone. Each one a photograph for the wall and a story for the dinner party.

I do not regret the trips. I regret the framing. The framing was acquisition.

The trip that changed me, in the way that travel is supposed to change you, was a week I spent in Fort Kochi when I had nothing planned. I stayed in a homestay run by a woman who insisted on cooking dinner for me every night. I wrote in the mornings. I walked in the afternoons. I sat on a sea wall in the evenings.

I went back the next year and did the same thing. The owner remembered me. The fish market boys teased me about my Malayalam. The bookseller put aside something he thought I would like.

This is the secret nobody tells you about travel: the second time is better than the first. The fifth time is better than the second.