It was early morning and the air around me was cool and still.
In every direction, I was surrounded by bright bursts of flame and huge swelling blooms of fabric slowly rising up from the grassy field on which I stood.
I couldn’t tell exactly where the uplifting electronic music was coming from, as it seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. The music fitted the scene around me like a perfect soundtrack.
I weaved between the baskets and the crowds. The fabrics swelled into their full shapes and became recognisable as dozens of brightly coloured hot air balloons, unfurling and blooming like enormous flowers waking up to the sun.
Once they filled, they rose gently, one by one above the horizon, scattering over the lake beside us. Everyone around me was smiling and taking photos and speaking Spanish.
I talked to balloon enthusiasts from around North America. I saw balloons shaped like clocks and dogs and Sponge Bob Square Pants filling the air. I watched them rise into the sky along with the sun and wondered at the sheer number of balloons above and around me.
I was at the annual hot air balloon festival in Leon, Mexico. I was there alone, and it was one of the most amazing man-made spectacles I had ever seen.
A week or so beforehand, I never even knew the festival existed.
A photographer I had met earlier on my trip in Mexico had spontaneously asked me if I wanted to come meet him in Leon to see this festival he’d heard about last-minute.
I’d said sure, I had no plans (other than a flight to the USA a month later) and caught a plane from Cancun to meet him there.
We hung out for a few days in Leon, but weather had kept most of the balloons grounded for the first half off the festival, so we explored the city instead. Because my friend was Mexican, he showed me local foods and drinks to try that I wouldn’t have thought to ask for otherwise.
Other than the festival, Leon wasn’t a city on the tourism trail, but it was filled with wide plazas and beautiful architecture and it was a refreshing change from Cancun. We met locals posing for their quinceañera and talked about life in hole in the wall restaurants.
We ate dinner with our Airbnb hosts at night and he translated for me, as they spoke only Spanish and me only English, and they took us to their friends’ child’s birthday party.
Their friends had a pet dog, a pet goose and a pet donkey, and they greeted us in the driveway with a bark, a honk and a hee-haw.
Leon hadn’t been part of any plans, but I’d loved it.
My friend had to get back to work in the US, and ended up having to leave Mexico before the main balloon event, so I was there that morning in the field by myself.
An hour beforehand, I’d wished him farewell in the taxi and had shed a tear about the fact I was about to be truly travelling alone for the first time on my trip in Mexico.
From here on in, I didn’t have one night of accommodation booked, a route to follow, or anyone I was planning to meet up with until I left the country.
There in the field by the lake, I stood in the crowd and looked up at the sky at this beautiful scene I could never had anticipated and that I only saw because of someone I had met along the way.
I couldn’t stop smiling.
Sometimes, the best plan is no plan, and it can take you to the most amazing places.
The benefit of surprises
Some people take pride in their ability to plan in advance, and so they should. It’s definitely a worthy skill and highly useful.
For many trips, thorough and detailed prior planning is essential. Some trips require planning for logistical and safety reasons, and many trips benefit greatly from some good old-fashioned pre-trip planning if time is of the essence or short in supply.
However, I would suggest that everyone indulges a trip overseas in their lives that leaves space for time without plans, days without itineraries, and flexibility.
A plan for no plans, shall we say.
The cost of over-planning travel is that you take out the surprise, and sometimes the wonder, of seeing places without expectations.
I never planned to explore a cool hipster co-working space and community garden in Bologna, as I hadn’t even planned to be in Bologna two nights before I stayed there.
I never planned to cruise around a mangrove island filled with sloths in Panama, as a week beforehand I hadn’t planned to go to Panama.
And I never planned to watch the day-break at that hot air balloon festival in Leon, Mexico.
I did all of those things and I loved them, without prior planning and without anticipation or expectation. I didn’t think about what else I could be doing, as I didn’t know what else I could be doing.
This made each of those memories all the more surprising and sweet.
While the planning types get all the accolades, a far less often lauded skill, but I believe equally valuable, is the ability to survive or even thrive without a plan – to relax into just being, to go with the flow and release control of the wheel.
This is a skill that is best learnt through experience.
To travel without a plan is to both give up and gain control
Not planning means relinquishing (at least the perception of) the longer-term control of your future circumstances, but gaining more control in the short term.
It gives you the ability to say yes to staying longer in places you fall in love with and move on from places you don’t.
It gives you permission to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves along the way, change course as you wish and tee up with other travelers if you click.
Any experienced traveler knows the best laid plans can always go awry and weather, traffic and delays can mean even the most perfectly planned trip is derailed.
Whether you travel with no plan at all or with a perfectly curated itinerary, the unexpected will inevitably occur eventually.
However, your plans can’t really be derailed if you had very few future plans to begin with.
The cure to FOMO and disappointment
Fear of missing out, or ‘FOMO’ is something that plagues so many of us, either when travelling or at home.
Planning can lead to FOMO, as you set yourself expectations for how things will unfold and are undoubtedly frustrated when it doesn’t happen as hoped, and you feel like you have missed out on some crucial experience.
The Dolomites are breathtaking, but I would have enjoyed driving through them more were I not disappointed about all the walks I’d read about that the weather prevented us from doing.
I would have enjoyed seeing the Monarch butterfly migration in Michoacan more if I hadn’t been hoping for a sunny day so long in advance that the scene on a cloudy day (which was still lovely) didn’t live up to the pictures I’d seen online.
These experiences were super great, but I was definitely impacted by FOMO on them, and tainted with a little disappointment, as I’d planned them to happen in a certain way, that I couldn’t ultimately ensure would occur.
This doesn’t mean that I regret having planned them in advance. Had the conditions been right, the planning I’d done would have benefitted those adventures.
However, it highlighted that advance planning can’t always create the desired outcome (as I couldn’t control the weather) and that sometimes it can almost backfire, as you end up disappointed because you know what you didn’t get to see.
Planning to not plan
If you’re interested in adding a bit more flexibility to your holidays, here’s my tips for travelling without a plan (or at least, less plans):
- Go somewhere with plenty to do. If a destination only has a few attractions or a few places to stay, there’s a chance these things may book out well in advance and pre-planning is a better idea. However, if you travel somewhere that has a lot of suppliers offering the same activities (like most tourist hot-spots in South-East Asia or Central America), or a place with a lot of activities on offer (a big city like London or Tokyo), you won’t have to worry about booking things far in advance and will always find plenty of options for things to do without planning your days in advance.
- Travel in the shoulder or peak season, but not in the busiest weeks of the year. Depending where you go in the world, if you travel during low season, you might find that not much is open or a whole host of activities aren’t available. Likewise, if you don’t check beforehand and travel somewhere during a peak local holiday (like Golden week in China or Christmas in Europe) you might not be able to find any accommodation or transport. Travel during busy or shoulder periods to keep your options open when travelling without a plan.
- Tack your unplanned travel between or after planned portions of travel. Travelling without a plan, especially for the first time, can be really daunting, especially in regard to the culture shock. Turning up somewhere without having your cultural bearings can be intimidating and potentially dangerous if you accidentally break local laws. A good way to ease into more flexible travelling is, for a two-week holiday for example, to plan the first week of the trip and leave the next week unplanned, or plan the start and end of a trip with some ‘free’ days in the middle.
- Book your first two night’s accommodation minimum. Travelling without a plan in its purist form would probably mean booking the next flight to whatever destination is available and rocking up at your destination with no accommodation for your first night. I’d advise against this, as you could end up without a bed for the night, or trapsing around from hotel to hotel with nowhere to stay. Even if you’re travelling without a plan, I’d suggest always booking the first couple of nights of accommodation when you land overseas. Just resist booking past that.
- Get advice on what to do from locals and other travelers once you’ve arrived. Once you’ve arrived in a place, or on the way there, is when you’ll want to start figuring out what to do. Take recommendations from locals and other travelers – it’s a great way to strike up conversation and the advice you get will be up to date and likely tailored to the weather and any current events that are on.
- Do read up on local laws, safety concerns and customs and always book travel insurance. Not planning doesn’t mean not reading up your destination at all. Familiarise yourself with the area’s safety guidelines, local laws, customs and any known scams or other concerns. Check online whether your destination has any travel advice in place from your government and make sure you book travel insurance that covers your destination.
- Allow yourself more time than you think you’ll need for getting around / getting organised on the road and bring a book. Travelling without a plan is definitely a privilege, as the best unplanned trips usually benefit from having the luxury of time to spare, but it can pay off as time awfully well spent. You’ll find when you travel without a plan you may end up on a shuttle bus with no other travelers, waiting at a bus stop longer than expected, or waiting outside a hostel for it to open for check in time. Bring a book or a travel journal to while away any downtime. A book that relates to your destination is always a plus.
- Be aware of safety on the road and communicate with home. If you travel with plans, people at home will likely know in advance where you will be and when. If you’re travelling without plans, people at home won’t know where you are unless you tell them. Stay in touch with contacts at home so that if something happens, you don’t stress friends and family out unnecessarily and so you can be readily helped out if needed.
- Expect that on occasion, you may spend a little more for your freedom and flexibility (but you’ll usually come out ahead). In my experience, the majority of things are cheaper when booked last minute – either at or on the way to your next destination. This applies particularly to tourist activities and tours, and can apply to accommodation specials as well. However, you might occasionally pay more for something when you book last minute than if you had the chance to do a whole bunch of research in advance. An example of this might be having to buy a slightly more expensive rental car because the cheapest one isn’t available. Prepare to suck this up as a cost of travelling in this way and know that your freedom is the benefit. As your future plans aren’t locked in, you can always try and save money over the coming days if you need to.
So there you have it, a little bit of advice for dipping your toes into unplanned travel. I love to pre-research trips, to pour over maps and to plan out my days in advance, so I know how hard it can be to sometimes let go, but as I’d said, I recommend that everyone try it at least once.
It’s a wonderful way to see the world, and there’s such a lot of world to see.
