In Favour of Wandering: Why You Should Take the Road Less Travelled

When planning a trip to a specific location, the natural course of action is to check every travel blog ever written about it, exhaust the attractions listed on TripAdvisor, and ask anyone you’ve ever had a brief conversation with about their experience there to create an itinerary. Now, that’s perfectly fine, and even recommendable—you can’t go on a trip without knowing what your destination holds after all. But you cannot live a life according to travel guides, either. 

When you deviate from the travel-blog-instructed trip itinerary, even by taking another form of transport than the stereotypically recommended, your trip inches closer to a new dimension, an individual dimension. It makes the trip yours, it gives you precious insight into the place you are in. When you only travel to specific popular attractions, you see the city in dressed up blocks, far removed from the beautiful reality of the destination. In a way, by wandering you become a short-term citizen of your destination, especially if you connect with the long-term citizens. 

I grew up accustomed to a relatively individualistic approach to travel. My parents, two people with potent individuality complexes, were aversive to group trips, so we spent most of our summers travelling as a group of four. Everyone was free to come and go as they pleased, within the constraints of whatever resort we were staying at. I’ll admit this was a step in the right direction, but my freedom demanded more than that. 

On a trip to Dahab in November 2021, I experienced for the first time what it was like to wander, completely unbound by resort walls or a travel programme, in a city that’s not my home. Inspired by the untainted innocence of the small seaside city, and its seeming safety, I convinced my mum and brothers to walk the thirty minutes from our hotel to the Lighthouse area, where we were going to dinner, instead of taking a cab. Our walk, parallel to the Red Sea, made complete by a light autumnal breeze, introduced us to restaurants we would have never encountered, locally-owned souvenir stores with treasures unscavenged by tourists, stray animals in need of company, and an overall sense of elatedness. It was as though I had lived my entire life in this city, as if I knew it more intimately than other tourists. I forged an authentic connection with the city, warts and all. 

This short walk birthed a need inside me that would not subside. Wherever I went, I needed to take the road less travelled, perhaps by taking a different commute. On foot, I was given the time to truly immerse myself in a city’s air, to make it familiar, to make it somewhere it would be hard to say goodbye to. 

Two years later, on another trip to Siwa Oasis with my best friend Sarah, I decided to wear my wandering philosophy with pride. A quiet city like Siwa—which managed to maintain its charm despite us visiting at the height of its tourism season—is easy to wander through. I mean, in its intimate nature and rootedness in community, it practically invites you to do so. The attractions mostly invite you to hike, chat with vendors, or go to Bedouin parties, and engaging with the locals is easy—they’re always happy to talk about their city’s overlooked history (and it is your duty to listen, these stories cannot go untold). But, even then, Sarah and I found room to deviate from the course. 

Upon checking into our ecological guesthouse, Tatrert, at the dawn of our first day in Siwa, Sarah and I spotted the top of a mountain (later, we discovered this was the Mountain of Dahshur) in what we considered a fairly walkable distance. We instantly made a note to walk there when we got the chance. On our last day in Siwa, after having packed our bags, we decided to say our goodbyes to the city in privacy and, with nothing but sanitiser, a lipliner and a digital camera in our pockets, set out on our walk. 

We walked all the way to Dahshur Mountain (proving that the distance was indeed walkable), on the way encountering abandoned springs, a farmer and his children (who offered us dates), and a beautiful unfenced olive grove. For most of the walk, Sarah and I were left to our thoughts, gazing at towering palm trees and the mountain getting bigger before us. It felt as though the world was ours, like we could go wherever. While we were sure people had walked this path before, it felt as though we were discovering something no one had ever seen. 

We ended up at the wrong end of the mountain (that is, the side no tourists enter from), and simply enjoyed the view and stray dogs that warmed up to us before making our way back. At the guesthouse, we realised our curiosity was not yet satiated, and began walking in the opposite direction, towards a lake we found on Google Maps (which, at the beginning of our journey, we were not even sure existed, it was just worth it to try). At this point, my friend Frida, who was staying a few guesthouses down at a beautiful hot spring resort, joined us. 

I won’t lie to you, the journey was worrisome at first, as we walked down gravel roads with no guarantee of the existence of this lake no one had heard of, but soon enough we became too enamoured by the surrounding nature and its full unapologetic perseverance to worry. In thickly populated fields of palm trees and vegetation I am not equipped to recognise, wildlife meandered freely, from stunning white egrets to cats and gerbils. Every time we spotted an animal or an insect, the three of us would come to a halt, and gawk breathlessly at the untouched beauty before us, feeling as though we were truly in no man’s land. 

Before long, the lake we were seeking made itself visible in the distance. You really couldn’t miss it, it was massive, and we wondered why no one came here. We trudged over to a cement block (with a tunnel in the middle that continues to scare us to this day), and sat down, enjoying the view and talking about whatever. 

Through my digicam viewfinder and the miraculous power of zoom, I got to observe native birds I had never seen before as they fluttered around and played in the water. Something bubbled with joy within me. Subsequent topics of conversation naturally included dreams of leaving everything behind and moving here to be with the birds and the lake and oneself. I took a brief intermission to walk barefoot on the sand surrounding the lake itself, only to find that it was far from stable, and I realised why no one came to this lake. The sand wasn’t really sand, it stood on water below, and in some areas it would sink and trap me up to my shins. It was terrifying at first, but there was no real danger, and the girls and I ended up getting a good laugh out of it as I attempted to clean my jeans and feet afterwards. 

Now, I know what you might be thinking. My experience of wandering around destinations like Dahab and Siwa was so organically beautiful because, well, these are beautiful places, well-suited for bohemian travel. While that is true, Dahab and Siwa probably encourage wandering in ways that other places might not, I’m committed to the argument that these cities’ natural beauty is not the only factor. You can (and should) wander anywhere and everywhere, even big gruesome cities like Cairo. 

When I first moved to Cairo from Alexandria, I was hesitant to make the move on my own, a natural reaction to a city this big and multifaceted. Plus, I had moved to Shorouk City, which is practically a desert with nothing to do. And yet, short walks around my neighbourhood unveiled layers of beauty and I grew fond of making my own individual explorations. 

When I ventured into the city’s more crowded neighbourhoods as well, I made sure to, when safe, walk down roads I hadn’t seen before. These shops, neighbourhoods, people teach you something—they make this city yours. 

Now, three years later, with Dahab, Siwa and Shorouk City far behind me, every time I go back to any of these destinations, I take occasional strolls through their streets, deviate off the well-known paths, and—as a consequence—instantly awaken something inside me. 

It became evident that by wandering, by getting lost, by making non-touristy mistakes, I had actually made the corners of these destinations mine and mine alone. That’s something no one can ever take away from me.