Long-distance road trip – New York Times Chinese

Asia TravelerSeptember 17, 2023

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In 2001, a British man named Tom Morgan decided to hold an extreme racing competition. The journey will begin in the UK and end at what he considers to be the most inaccessible destination in the world for most people: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, a distance of more than 5,500 miles.

He called it a “Mongol rally.” Participants must drive the baddest cars they can find, avoid any planning and have as much fun as possible. Only six cars competed in the first year. But interest grew as people began talking about the rally online.

“Things got pretty intense,” Morgan said. More than 2,000 teams are waiting to compete in the next Mongol Rally.

The growing popularity of this competition is an example of the interest in travel to remote destinations. Adventure travel companies and insurance providers are seeing record sales this year. “We’ve never been busier,” said Michael Pullman, director of marketing for adventure travel company Wild Frontiers. Global Rescue, a company that provides emergency rescue to customers around the world, said consumer sales last year were up 36% compared with 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

The companies say their customers are skipping Bali or Santorini in favor of destinations with less tourist infrastructure. The number of tourists visiting Antarctica has more than tripled in the past decade. Nepal has issued a record number of permits to climb Mount Everest this year. As I discovered on my road trip across the country, car rental companies in Mongolia are sold out of SUVs this summer.

taste changed

Experts attribute the surge in interest in part to pandemic restrictions and precautions that keep people at home. In the wake of the coronavirus lockdown, people are eager to travel to distant places. “People want to feel free again,” said Max Muench, co-founder of the travel company Follow the Tracks.

They also feel time is precious and should cross bucket list items, Pullman said. Wild Frontiers is seeing greater interest in places like Mongolia, Namibia and Uzbekistan, where bookings are up 150% compared to 2019.

Experts say social media also plays a role. Instagram is flooded with advertising posts for foreign destinations. These posts are social currency, conferring status to users who share images from remote locations.

“People know their posts will make their neighbors envious,” said Dan Richards, CEO of Global Relief. “So they will go to Bhutan instead of buying a BMW.”

Some governments see rising interest in adventure tourism as an economic opportunity for their countries. They invested in social media marketing campaigns to attract more visitors. The Mongolian government invited influencers to come and release videos of the country’s verdant valleys, Caribbean blue lakes and orange sand dunes.

But by bringing in more tourists, the government is jeopardizing the country’s reputation as a remote destination. Tourists bring wallets and stimulate economic development, but they also bring pollution and damage to the environment and bring social change to the community.

“This country is changing rapidly,” said Mongolia travel expert Breanna Wilson. “The Wild West wouldn’t last much longer.”

Learn more about the rise Adventure travel in Mongolia is here.

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Earlier this year, I spoke with Jenny Odell, author of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock , about the dangers of time management.

You are skeptical that any time management mindset can lead to a more substantial relationship with time. But who’s to say that one can’t find contentment by viewing time as something that can yield a better return?

My suspicion is that looking at time as a solution is offered to people who have no control over their time – if they controlled their time in this grid-like way, they would be successful in life. I think this person has the potential to use this way of thinking to self-punish.

You’ve said that the ROI of time perspective goes in a direction that makes no sense. I’d like to know more about why you think that.

The question here is why you do anything at all. This culture of making everything more efficient risks avoiding the why question. A comprehensive efficient and convenient life? Excellent, Why?

Do you have any suggestions for how people can answer this question themselves?

For example, what is the meaning of life?

Yes.

It’s easy for someone who’s completely habitual to think of the days as the stuff you use to achieve your goals. There is a degree of separation between that and someone who is so open to every moment that it becomes dysfunctional, but I want to live closer to the second pole. For me, the things that energize me are often the encounters that ultimately change you. To me, these are reminders that yes, I will be different in the future, so I have a reason to live, and that is to find out what that change will be.

Read more from the interview here.

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