I travel freeloader style, ie as cheaply as possible, atm I'm on 10$ a day in Egypt for the last couple of months, half of which is spent on a place to sleep. I walk, hitch and pay for public transport out of big cities, or if possible travel 3rd class with the locals.
My point is that , learning the language, meeting the people, seeing their reality, enjoying the weather (while Europe is stuck in the cold) , feeling lucky because someone stops to give me a lift is a total mind fuck and I mean that in a good way...
The inherent chaos of roughing it and having time to contemplate the beautiful vistas with no one around , the Milky way, the generosity or animosity is a reality check which helps clear the cobwebs from the mind and sharpens critical thought....
I agree with one poster that people don't take enough time to travel, I personally would like to connect more with and help locals in my specialities (music, gardening) and hate what the tourist industry has done, is doing to the environment (cheap jobs for the locals, wasted ressources on "short term" infrastructure, huge amounts of waste and garbage)
I personally think that to combat climat change it would be great to see swathes of the poorer European population, chill out and/or travel(for 2-3 months)in the empty tourist resorts or villages of the southern hemisphere, thereby hitting several birds with one stone : having experiences which lead to increased sensitivity and hopefully more empathy , not needing to pay the high prices for heating their homes , having a well deserved holiday as part of the "proletariat", hopefully sharing and learning to be more "open minded"
I'm not sure of the math but unless we are very lucky and CO2 sucking or free energy fusion technology has a huge breakthrough, the world will, is, burning up and the best solution would be to get as many of those who can afford democratically to stop work to do so, thereby creating a net CO2 reduction (ie work and all the energy consumption work entails + transport and supermarket logistics+ heating and useless paper advertising weekly supermarket discounts (-) travel by boat and cheap living) in warm countries ... we saw this with the advent of covid....
On a side note, reading HN is the best , it downloads fast and caches for offline reading...also I just came across a wonderful book called "Dancing with mosquitoes" by Theo Grutter , totally recommend.