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If you're going to travel the world many times, learn to sail and favor trains. Or define "world" as smaller than the actual globe.

The benefits of travel are numerous. They were there before our understanding of global heating and pollution. Times have changed since sentiments like in this post.

We have to factor our new understanding into our models for a good life. Seeing as how billions of people before flying led happy lives, flying around the world four times isn't necessary.

(To clarify, Derek didn't say you have to fly around the world four times. He wrote it generally enough that you could interpret it several ways, but I expect many people will interpret him to mean fly around the world four times.)



>If you're going to travel the world many times, learn to sail and favor trains.

Don't do it just for "the climate". There's something magic about sail and rail. Traveling this way makes the world feel immense. And it is. We just mostly miss it now riding in sky-cans from one Starbucks to the next.


We've travelled to Europe by train instead of air, and the journey is as much part of the experience as the destination. The cities we've stopped at, the new and often mostly tourist free places we've found, that still have unique national flavour. The travel time is no longer wasted, but part of the holiday. Some of the most magic views have been from the train.

We've also discovered far, far more nationally, and a lot of jewels off the beaten track away from the famous and touristy.

We'd miss that if we started going by air again. We mostly don't want to.


I once traveled Europe by car with a friend. Some 8000 kilometers, 13 or 14 countries, 1 month. It was magical.

Will never forget the owner of a small camp in rural Spain who didn’t spoke a word of English and was sooo excited to see foreigners that he fed us homemade grappa basically until we dropped. His treat of course.

Or the random village on the border of France and Belgium where we had a flat and had to ride our longboards into town and mime to people that we need help. They got us a tow truck from 2 villages over on a Sunday. All without us knowing a word of French or them a word of English.

Don’t waste travel time folks. It’s the best part of a vacation.


Yeah, it's exactly these sorts of lucky encounters in tiny restaurant or village, with a few local characters, or the bar lock-in you didn't even know you were invited to etc that stick the longest!

Sure beats 2 hrs in departures. :)


I think the author is suggesting to cross the world figuratively, not literally.

Crossing the world is exploring businesses, people, trends, culture. If you live in a big city, you can go around the world 10 times in a few miles.




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