I’ve spent a considerable portion of my life arriving in countries where I don’t know anyone, can’t understand half the signs, and have only a loose interpretation of what I’m supposed to be doing next. Over the years, I’ve discovered that some of the most memorable travel experiences begin with remarkably ordinary decisions.
Where you choose to eat. How you get from one place to another. Whether you make the effort to learn a few words in the local language or simply assume everyone else will accommodate yours.
None of these things sounds particularly adventurous. There are no mountains to summit, border crossings to navigate, or extraordinary stories to impress your friends back home. But I’ve found they often determine how much of a place you actually experience.
Somewhere along the way, I started organizing my travels around three simple principles: eat local, speak local, and travel local.
Not because I’m interested in being a superior breed of backpacker. I’ve eaten plenty of mediocre meals, butchered more languages than I care to admit, and spent uncomfortable hours on buses questioning nearly every decision that brought me there. But these habits have opened doors to people, experiences, and unexpected friendships that I probably would have missed otherwise.
And after exploring countries across the world, they’re still the principles I come back to.
Eat local: The quickest way into a culture
I’ve always believed food is one of the most enjoyable ways to understand a place. Every country has its own ingredients, traditions, flavors, and little rituals surrounding meals. Some are elaborate celebrations. Others involve sitting on a plastic chair somewhere, pointing at something you don’t recognize, and hoping for the best.
I’m particularly fond of the latter.
Food has an extraordinary ability to bring people together without requiring much in the way of shared language. You can sit across from someone whose life looks completely different from yours and find common ground in the simple pleasure of eating something delicious.
I remember spending time near Merzouga, on the edge of Morocco’s Sahara Desert, where I found myself returning to a local café rather than constantly searching for somewhere new. There was something satisfying about becoming familiar with a place, recognizing the people who worked there, and slowly feeling a little less like someone passing through.
It wasn’t about discovering some secret restaurant that nobody else knew existed. It was about giving myself enough time to enjoy the ordinary rhythm of being there.
I’ve had similar experiences across the world. Some of my favorite meals have happened in modest restaurants, busy markets, and people’s homes, often in situations where I had absolutely no idea what I was about to eat.
Not every experiment has been a culinary triumph. Occasionally, I’ve ordered something that looked considerably more appealing before it arrived. But I’ve rarely regretted trying.
There’s also a practical side to eating locally. Supporting independent restaurants, markets, and family-run businesses keeps more of your spending within the communities you’re visiting. And while that alone doesn’t make you a responsible traveler, it’s a small decision that can contribute something positive to the places welcoming you.
I’m not suggesting you need to avoid every familiar restaurant or refuse a decent burger simply because you’re in another country. Sometimes you just want a burger.
But if you’re constantly eating the same things you eat at home, you’re missing one of the easiest opportunities to experience something different.
Speak local: A little effort goes a long way
I have a habit of learning a handful of phrases whenever I visit a new country. Hello, thank you, please, excuse me, and whatever else seems likely to help me navigate the day.
My pronunciation is frequently terrible. I’ve undoubtedly said things that made absolutely no sense, and I suspect there are people scattered across several continents who still remember the American enthusiastically attempting to communicate with the linguistic ability of a confused toddler.
But I’ve found that making the effort matters more than getting everything right.
Language is an important part of how people understand their culture, express themselves, and connect with one another. When you arrive somewhere and immediately expect everyone to communicate in English, you’re placing the responsibility for understanding entirely on the person welcoming you.
Learning a few phrases is a small way of meeting someone halfway.
Sometimes it leads to a smile. Sometimes it starts a conversation. Occasionally, it results in someone deciding that your enthusiasm deserves a much longer language lesson than you’d originally anticipated.
All perfectly good outcomes.
And there’s something particularly rewarding about being able to navigate ordinary moments without constantly reaching for your phone. Ordering a coffee, greeting someone at a market, or asking a simple question becomes more personal when you make the effort to communicate in their language.
I’ve also learned that speaking local doesn’t necessarily mean talking very much.
Some of the most meaningful interactions I’ve had while traveling involved listening, paying attention, and accepting that I wasn’t going to understand every detail of another person’s experience.
Curiosity is useful. So is knowing when to be quiet.
Travel local: The journey is part of the experience
If you’ve spent much time following my travels, you’ll probably have noticed that I have a slightly unreasonable affection for long, occasionally uncomfortable journeys.
Buses, shared vans, trains, ferries, and whatever other form of transportation happens to connect two places I’m interested in visiting. I’ve spent countless hours traveling overland, occasionally arriving exhausted, hungry, and wondering whether the flight I deliberately avoided might have been a reasonable investment.
But there’s something I enjoy about experiencing the distance between destinations.
When you fly from one major city to another, much of what lies between them disappears. You leave one airport, spend a few hours in the air, and emerge somewhere completely different.
Traveling by land allows you to watch that transition unfold.
You see the landscapes change, the towns become smaller or larger, the food at roadside stops shift, and the rhythms of daily life evolve as you move through a country.
You also spend a lot of time alongside people who are simply going about their lives.
During my 2023 journey from Morocco through Mauritania and into Senegal, I relied heavily on local transportation. There were long bus rides through Western Sahara, shared vehicles across Mauritania, a ferry crossing at the Senegal River, and an extraordinary journey through the desert aboard an iron ore train.
Not all of those experiences were comfortable, and I wouldn’t recommend every transportation decision I’ve made over the years.
But traveling overland allowed me to experience places and meet people I wouldn’t necessarily have encountered otherwise.
In Mauritania, I spent time with Haroune, a local friend who helped me navigate Nouakchott and prepare for the train journey. During the journey itself, I met another traveler, Sterling, from Kansas. We spent roughly twenty hours together crossing the Sahara, an unlikely place to meet someone from the middle of my own country.
I remember those encounters just as vividly as the destinations.
And that’s what makes local transportation so interesting to me. It’s not necessarily an efficient way to travel, but efficiency has never been the only thing I’m looking for.
The point is to experience the journey rather than treat everything between destinations as an inconvenience.
The difference between visiting and experiencing
I think there’s a tendency among travelers, myself included, to become overly interested in collecting places.
We count countries, photograph landmarks, visit famous attractions, and gradually build an impressive collection of stories about everywhere we’ve been.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. I enjoy exploring new countries as much as anyone, and there are plenty of places I’d still like to visit.
But I’ve become increasingly aware that the number of places you’ve traveled tells people surprisingly little about how you’ve experienced them.
You can spend a week somewhere and barely interact with anyone who lives there. Equally, you can spend an afternoon sharing a meal with a stranger and come away with an entirely different appreciation for the place you’re visiting.
Neither experience makes you an expert on a culture. And spending a few days with local people doesn’t suddenly give you the authority to explain an entire country.
I’ve learned that the more places I visit, the less comfortable I become making sweeping statements about them.
Every country contains people with different values, experiences, opinions, and circumstances. There’s no single authentic way to experience a place, and the lives of its residents don’t exist for the benefit of travelers seeking personal growth.
But making an effort to engage with the world around you can replace assumptions with actual encounters.
And that’s where things become interesting.
Why these principles still matter to me
It’s been several years since I first started writing about eating, speaking, and traveling locally. My life looks considerably different today.
I’m no longer spending most of my time moving between countries with a backpack. Much of my energy now goes toward building Gevity with my wife, Espoir, and figuring out how to create a meaningful business and community in Austin.
But I still find myself returning to the same instincts.
Pay attention to people. Take an interest in their lives. Make the effort to understand what’s unfamiliar rather than immediately comparing it to what you already know.
These habits have influenced how I approach relationships, business, hospitality, and the communities I want to be part of.
What’s also changed is my understanding of what meaningful travel actually requires.
When I was younger, I sometimes felt that the most adventurous experience was automatically the most worthwhile. The longer bus journey, the more unfamiliar destination, the greater distance from anything recognizable.
I still enjoy those adventures, but I no longer believe discomfort is some necessary ingredient for authentic travel.
You don’t need to spend twenty hours on a freight train or disappear into an unfamiliar country to have a meaningful experience. Sometimes it’s as simple as visiting a neighborhood you’ve never explored, sitting down with someone whose background is different from yours, or making an effort to understand the people around you.
Curiosity doesn’t require a passport.
And despite how much I enjoy traveling, I think that’s the part of this philosophy I appreciate most today.
A little less collecting, a little more connecting
I’m still interested in seeing as much of the world as I can. There are mountains I want to climb, countries I’m curious about, and plenty of meals I’d happily travel several thousand miles to try.
But I don’t want the experience of traveling to become a competition over who has been somewhere more unusual or who has collected the most impressive adventures.
The people I’ve met, the conversations I’ve had, and the places where I’ve felt unexpectedly welcome have shaped my life far more than a growing list of destinations.
And in most cases, those experiences began with something remarkably simple.
Eating where other people eat. Making an effort to communicate. Taking the slower route occasionally and seeing what happens along the way.
Eat local. Speak local. Travel local.
Three small habits that have made an enormous difference to how I experience the world.
And fortunately, not one of them requires another mountain summit or a particularly expensive plane ticket.
