How to travel the world without flying

After more than four days at sea, sitting across from two Norwegian 20s on a leather couch in the smoking room, wearing a tattered sweater and pushing my glasses up my nose, I realized that I had forgotten how to talk to people my own age. .

I didn’t have exact numbers for the average age of passengers on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2, but here, the 65-year-olds represent the wild youth. The most popular activities were bridge and square dancing. I overheard others casually talking at the dinner table about living through World War II. It was a lot of pudding.

But somehow we call this Norwegian couple in their early 20s Emily and Lukas. Like me, Emily didn’t fly. She used it, but her aviophobia could not continue. “I’ll be with thousands of feet in the air and I’ll be like, ‘Why? Why am I doing this? Emily said. Like me, Emily didn’t want it to stop her from traveling the oceans. So she and Lucas took five months off work, traveled by train to various European countries, took the Queen Mary II to America, then combined Amtrak and Flexbus to Orlando, Miami, Washington, D.C., and New York.

That “why?” Emily asked herself as she was suspended in mid-air. Many young travelers are asking themselves. Even those who are not afraid to fly are expressing that they are tired of the process, concerned about fossil emissions and simply want a different way to see the world.

As a lifestyle, avoiding flying is strange, lonely and expensive. For every professional you can count, there’s a glaring problem. With America’s lack of high-speed rail, the illegality and cost of cruise ships, and confusion about how to properly board cargo, fear alone is not enough to make today’s flyers commit to traveling without a plane. Instead, they had to find a purpose, a deeper meaning, that went beyond fear. Emily tells me that since she doesn’t fly, she sees a lot of places to visit. “If I were to fly in and out, I don’t think I would get to those parts of America or talk to the people I do,” she said.

When I tell people that I don’t fly, they look at me with curiosity and pity, thinking that I can’t go anywhere and see anything. And while I didn’t get to hop on a flight and brush up in Tulum, I did cross the Atlantic and see vast swaths of the American West that I wouldn’t have had the chance to see otherwise. I once had a random two-day stay in Chicago that ultimately led to my decision to move there. I talked to a lot of people on the train – Amish people who had recently been released from prison – and it all broadened my perspective.

But this expansion wouldn’t be possible without time — of which I have plenty, as a freelance travel writer. Emily and Lucas run their own business so they are able to take a lot of time off from work. In the year In the fall of 2008, Steve Griffin and his partner, both 28, decided to take different trains and change places on a cruise from San Diego to Istanbul while on vacation. “I believe we were the youngest on the boat by almost 30 years,” Griffin said. “I read a lot, ate good food and watched flying fish. We stopped in Tenerife and Corsica – most people don’t stop there when flying to Europe because it’s off the beaten path. Overall, a good time.

But unless you’re really willing to tip, not flying can be very expensive. A round-trip Atlantic cruise on Cunard costs up to $30,000 for a Queen’s Grille Suite. If you can book a sliding cabin (which they call “Britain Inside”) for $4,000, that’s considered a steal. Amtrak coach fares are reasonable, but currently a sleeper—the only convenient way to travel long distances by train in America—will set you back between $1,000 and $1,700. And with long layovers and unreliable schedules, you’ll have to shell out for hotels on vacation or plan to spend a whole month on a different continent. Even if the price is reduced, the ability to find enough time from work to do all this is not within everyone’s control. “For a lot of people, you either fly or stay at home,” says Emily.

Another traveler I spoke to, Gianluca Grimaldi, was able to adhere to the principles of climate change because he is an academic researcher who works remotely while on a boat or train. “In total, I traveled 20,000 miles from Germany to Tokyo. [T20 Summit at the G20 Conference]” He said he was able to squeeze in two research trips to study indigenous peoples in Russia and Papua New Guinea, and was forced to fly there from Tokyo because there were no cargo ships on the way. Although he usually avoids air travel, Grimaldi has been able to see all of Singapore, China, and Iran by boat, bus, ferry, train, or, surprisingly, cargo ship.

On a cargo ship, you don’t have picnic-style grills like buffets, buffets, or wings. There may be five passengers and thirty crew members on board, a far cry from the average 3,000 guests you’ll find on a commercial airline. Yet it’s the bare-bones nature and intimacy of the character that Grimaldi says makes traveling this way an unforgettable experience. “It’s fun,” he marvels. She would not see another ship or land for days.

While you will always need time, Grimaldi’s strategy proves that not flying is not a waste. It uses the Slow Travel Experience, which helps travelers find cargo ships and other alternative cruises, including mail cruises to remote locations in the South Pacific. And for a one-night stay, he’d rather surf on the most expensive couch than stay in an expensive hotel. He said the softsurfing communities in Iran and Russia have been particularly active and welcoming. “I stayed in Moscow, Tomsk (Siberia), Ulan-Ude (East Baikal) and Vladivostok; “The woman I spent time with in Ulan Ude was blind and kind,” he explained. “I used to sleep in Mashhad and Yazd in Iran. [The people I stayed with] He showed me around Tehran, Tabriz and Isfahan. It is truly an amazing experience. “

For me, as a black woman, sitting on a couch in Russia and Iran or riding a cargo ship—it’s not necessarily something I feel comfortable doing. And it’s not a matter of creature comforts or international relations concerns. As I traveled across America on Amtrak trains, how my flying lifestyle in relation to my race never crossed my mind. And when it came time to travel internationally, I didn’t think I’d have to worry too much about a luxury cruise. But after making a transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton, England on Cunard – a luxury and long-established British cruise line – it came to the forefront of my mind.

During the trip I experienced the most blatant racism of my life. A man asked if I was a player from the Caribbean, a woman tried to touch my hair in the elevator, and a port clerk at Southampton Cruise told me to get in the first class queue and line up with the ship’s crew. When I expressed confusion in her direction, she looked me up and down and said impatiently, “I’m assuming you’re an employee, aren’t you?” She said to me. The whole experience reinforced that I need to keep my guard up when I travel, especially when I spend multiple days committing to a low-cost mode of transportation.

Racism is one of the things that keeps people from traveling without flying, especially internationally. Ask travel writer Lavanya Sukhara, who recently launched a modern luxury yacht with her husband. “I was sitting in the corner of the lounge minding my own business and working on my laptop, and this woman asked if I was working. [for the cruise]” she recalls. “I wonder if a white woman was sitting here asking the same question? Being a brown or black person on a luxury cruise hurts.

When I broached the subject of my crossing from India into Pakistan with some of my Pakistani friends, they were concerned that the border officials would be more suspicious of me because I was a black woman. He left me with a reminder to save my plane-free ways to visit my partner’s family in Islamabad.

But until the situation absolutely required it, I was content not to fly. What started out as me trying to get rid of my fear has now become a way of life that I can’t imagine living without. It has helped me grow in so many ways—it has made me organized, compassionate, adventurous, and calm. As Grimalda says, “The travel experience is not about the destination or destination, but about the journey. There’s a lot you can learn just by looking out your window.

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