From Tourist to Traveller: How the Road Changed the Way I Travel
TL;DR; For The Impatient Traveler
I didn’t start as an experienced traveller. I started like most of us, as a tourist chasing landmarks, photographs and selfies. But solo travel, road trips, mistakes, unexpected detours and the kindness of strangers slowly changed the way I travelled. Across 90+ countries, the road taught me six traits I value today: Explorer’s Curiosity, Pilgrim’s Humility. Soldier’s Discipline, Farmer’s Patience, Nomad’s Adaptability and Monk’s Gratitude.
I still love famous places and still take the photograph. I’ve simply learned to look beyond the frame because often the road, the people and the unexpected moments become the real journey.
How travel changes you and develop a travel mindset for meaningful travel experiences.
I wasn’t always a traveller; I was a tourist first. And I’ve mentioned in this blog, The benefits of travelling.
Landmarks mattered. Photographs mattered. Selfies mattered. If I travelled thousands of kilometres to Paris, I wanted my photograph with the Eiffel Tower. Rome meant the Colosseum. Switzerland meant the Alps. Like most people discovering the world for the first time, I wanted to stand in front of the places I had seen in history books, geography lessons, films and photographs and say, I’ve been there.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Even today, I still want those photographs.
What changed was everything happening outside the frame.
The transformation didn’t happen after visiting a particular country or reaching some magical number on my country count. It started when I began travelling alone, and it accelerated when I started taking solo road trips.
Solo travel removes your safety net. There is nobody sitting beside you to decide which road to take, talk to the policeman, solve the problem at the hotel, understand why the car is making that strange noise or decide whether bad weather means continuing or turning around. You make the decision, and you live with it.
Road trips took that even further.
The more kilometres I drove, the less interested I became in simply moving from one famous attraction to another. I started noticing villages between cities, conversations at fuel stations, people behind hotel desks, empty mountain roads, roadside cafés and places I had never intended to visit.
Over a journey that eventually took me through more than 90 countries, something slowly happened. I didn’t stop being a tourist. Instead, experience started adding something to the tourist I already was.
Explorer’s Curiosity, Pilgrim’s Humility, Soldier’s Discipline, Farmer’s Patience, Nomad’s Adaptability and Monk’s Gratitude.
I didn’t learn these from a travel book. I built them through mistakes, wrong turns, strangers, roads and experiences I could never have planned. And I am still building them.
The Lost Mumbaikar says:
“Once you change from a tourist to a traveller, you stop worrying about the carefully planned hours and days of your itinerary. You learn to change it. A good itinerary should guide your journey, it should never become your boss.”
1. Explorer’s Curiosity: Sometimes You Have to Leave the Itinerary Behind
The tourist in me always wanted to know: What are the must-see places?
The traveller in me gradually started asking: What else is out there?
One of the best examples happened at Oslo Airport.
I already had my journey planned. I had a flight from Oslo to Prague. Then I started making small talk with someone at the airport and our conversation somehow turned to Nordkapp, the North Cape, far above the Arctic Circle.
Until that conversation, Nordkapp wasn’t part of my journey at all.
But the idea refused to leave my head. I kept thinking: I’m already in Norway. I’m already this far north. When will I get another opportunity to travel all the way towards the northern edge of Europe?
Eventually curiosity defeated the itinerary.
I let my Oslo-to-Prague flight go and headed north instead.
That spontaneous decision eventually took me through an extraordinary Arctic landscape towards Nordkapp. Reindeer appeared along the road, the summer sun seemed unwilling to disappear, and eventually I stood looking out towards the Arctic Ocean from one of Europe’s great northern edges.
None of it was supposed to happen.
And that was exactly what made it special.
Earlier in my travelling life, losing a flight intentionally would have sounded ridiculous. I had paid for it. Prague was on the itinerary. Why would I change everything because of a conversation with a stranger?
But experience had started changing the question.
Instead of asking What am I losing?, I had started asking What might I discover?
That doesn’t mean travelling without preparation. I still research extensively and plan my journeys. But I’ve learned to leave enough empty space for curiosity.
Because sometimes the person sitting beside you knows something Google doesn’t know about you: what will excite you enough to change your journey.
2. Piligrim’s Humility: A Smile Can Take You Further Than a Passport
Of all the traits travelling has developed in me, humility may be the one I value most.
When we enter another country, hotel, restaurant, airport or village, we are visitors. Yet sometimes travel creates entitlement. We paid for the room, bought the ticket or booked the table, so we expect everything to happen exactly as we want.
Years on the road have taught me something much simpler.
Smile. Say good morning. Say please and thank you. Ask instead of demand. Make a little conversation. If somebody struggles with your language, don’t embarrass them. Remember that you are in their country; they aren’t required to speak yours.
It sounds almost too simple to call it a travel lesson, but I have watched it work around the world.
A hotel receptionist may make an extra effort and find you a beautiful room. Airline staff may help you with upgrade in your class when circumstances allow. A waiter may tell you what locals really eat rather than what tourists usually order. Someone you meet casually may tell you about a restaurant, village or viewpoint you would never have discovered yourself.
One incident in Lisbon still reminds me how far a little humility and kindness can sometimes take you.
I was flying from Lisbon to Nice. On my way to the airport, someone had suggested a place near the mountains outside Lisbon. Curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to see it before my flight. On the drive back, things went wrong. I hit another car.
Fortunately, I had all the necessary documents and dealt with the accident properly, but naturally it delayed me. By the time I reached the airport and rushed to the gate, boarding had closed.
The lady at the gate was very clear: the gate is closed.
I was desperate, but I didn’t argue with her. I explained what had happened, showed her the accident papers and asked whether there was anything she could do. She looked at the documents and realised I wasn’t inventing an excuse.
Then something happened that I have never forgotten.
The same lady who had just told me the gate is closed went out of her way to help. She spoke to someone in Portuguese, somehow managed to get the gate reopened, looked at me and said:
“Run, Shiju! You have 20 minutes!”
I was so relieved that I hugged her. The other passengers around us started smiling and laughing, and then I ran.
I made the flight.
What stayed with me wasn’t simply that I got from Lisbon to Nice that day. It was that she didn’t owe me that favour. I was late. The gate was closed. The problem was mine, not hers.
Perhaps she saw that I was genuinely desperate. Perhaps showing the accident documents helped her understand that my story was real. But I also believe the way we speak to people when we’re under pressure matters.
I could have demanded, “I have a ticket. You have to let me board.”
Instead, I needed her help and I behaved like someone who needed help.
That distinction has stayed with me throughout my travels.
Humility isn’t weakness. Sometimes it is simply recognising that the person standing in front of you has the choice to do only their job or go the extra mile for you.
And when they do, never forget to say thank you.
That is travel for me: sometimes you remember the destination, but sometimes you remember forever the stranger who opened a closed gate.
3. Soldier’s Discipline: Freedom Without Responsibility Is Carelessness
Road trips look wonderfully romantic in photographs: an empty highway, beautiful mountains, music playing and nowhere you need to be.
What the photograph doesn’t show is the responsibility behind it.
Fuel planning. Insurance. Speed limits. Parking restrictions. Weather forecasts. Border rules. Rental agreements. Tyres. Mountain roads. Early starts. Fatigue. And sometimes your entire family sitting in the car trusting your judgement.
I have learned some of these lessons the expensive way.
I’ve made wrong turns, received traffic fines and damaged an RV roof in Finland badly enough to receive a bill of around €4,800. On one long European journey, I drove so much that when the rental-car guy saw the odometer, his expression suggested that “unlimited mileage” had never been tested quite like this before.
But one of my simplest lessons came in Miami.
It was around 5 a.m., and I was driving towards South Beach to catch the early sunrise. My DSLR had fallen down inside the car, and while looking down for a moment, I became a little too casual with my driving, right in front of a police officer. Actually, I almost hit his car.
When he stopped me, I didn’t have some clever explanation. I simply told him the truth: “Sir, I’m in Miami to catch the sunrise. My DSLR fell down and I looked down for a moment.”
He looked at the camera and realised my story was genuine. I then added that Miami’s famous party life wasn’t really my thing. I was more interested in getting to South Beach early enough to photograph the sunrise.
He laughed and and he let me go.
It was a small encounter, but I still remember it because there was something wonderfully human about it. I had made a mistake, I didn’t try to argue my way out of it, and I didn’t invent an excuse. I simply admitted what had happened.
Of course, the larger lesson stayed with me too: no sunrise or photograph is worth becoming careless on the road. But that morning also taught me something about travelling. Sometimes honesty, humility and a little human conversation work better than trying to prove that you are right.
I eventually missed my South Beach sunrise. But I didn’t miss the lesson. And strangely, after all these years, I remember the policeman more clearly than the sunrise I never saw.
That lesson applies to mountain roads, flooded wadis, snow, fog, unfamiliar cities and long overnight drives. Adventure and recklessness are not the same thing.
Solo road trips gave me enormous freedom. They also taught me that the more freedom you have, the more discipline you need.
4. Farmer’s Patience: Not Every Place Has to Be Reached Today
Patience was not one of my natural travel strengths.
If I had travelled thousands of kilometres to see something, I wanted to see it. If it was on the itinerary, I wanted to complete it. Turning back could feel like failure.
Peru helped change that.
Around my Machu Picchu journey, difficult weather and heavy rain eventually forced me to reconsider what I had planned. The younger traveller in me might have thought: I’ve come all this way. I have to continue.
Experience was beginning to say something else.
Not today.
I changed the plan.
And then something happened that no itinerary could have arranged: a local family gave me shelter.
What could have become a frustrating memory about rain and an abandoned plan instead became a memory about people.
I lost the itinerary that day, I gained a story I still remember. The road has taught me that patience isn’t simply waiting. It is knowing when to stop fighting circumstances you cannot control.
The mountain will still be there and the road can be driven another day.
Sometimes the rain wins. And sometimes, sitting safely with strangers who have opened their home to you becomes a richer travel experience than stubbornly reaching the destination you had circled on your map.
A tourist sometimes worries about what he missed. A traveller slowly learns to appreciate what happened instead.
5. Nomad’s Adaptability: Let the Journey Rewrite the Plan
Patience teaches you to accept change and adaptability teaches you what to do next.
Solo travel made this unavoidable because there was nobody else to make the decision for me. Flights change. Weather changes. Roads close. Cars break. Hotels disappoint. A place you expected to love doesn’t connect with you, while somewhere you planned to spend two hours makes you want to stay for two days.
Earlier, I wanted to complete the itinerary. Now I am far more comfortable editing it.
Oslo became Nordkapp because of a conversation. Peru changed because of rain. Countless road trips across Europe changed because a mountain road looked interesting, a village felt right or the family simply wanted to stay somewhere longer.
I have learned to leave early when a place isn’t working and stay longer when it is. I have changed hotels, routes and sometimes entire travel plans. I have taken U-turns because conditions didn’t feel right and spontaneous detours simply because curiosity said, Why not?
This doesn’t mean planning is useless.
Quite the opposite. Good preparation gives you the confidence to adapt intelligently. But I no longer want an itinerary so rigid that I spend my holiday serving it.
A good itinerary should guide your journey. It should never become your boss. Maybe this is one of the biggest differences between the tourist I was and the traveller I am still becoming.
Earlier, changing the plan felt like losing something. Now, sometimes, it feels like travelling.
6. Monk’s Gratitude: Never Forget the Stranger Who Helped You
The more I travelled, the more I discovered how dependent travellers actually are on strangers.
We like to think we are independent. We book our own flights, rent our own cars, navigate with our phones and plan everything ourselves.
Then something goes wrong. And suddenly another human being matters enormously.
Sydney Airport gave me one of those moments I still remember clearly. In the confusion around immigration, I forgot my DSLR camera and didn’t realise it until I had already left the airport and boarded the metro towards my hotel.
The moment I realised, I came straight back.
But there was a problem. I had already cleared immigration and exited the secure area. I couldn’t simply walk back inside, and my camera had been left somewhere around immigration.
I approached the police and explained what had happened. They checked, located my DSLR and then did something I wasn’t expecting. Another police officer came all the way out to the exit specifically to hand the camera back to me.
Anyone passionate about photography knows that feeling. A DSLR isn’t merely an expensive object. It carries pieces of your journey. Photographs and moments you may never be able to recreate.
When the officer handed it back, he gave me a piece of advice that has stayed with me. He basically said, “Not everyone in Australia will be like us. Be careful next time.”
He was right.
I had been careless. A stranger had helped correct my mistake, but he also reminded me not to assume that every mistake would end so fortunately.
After experiencing theft and losing things on other journeys, moments like Sydney have taught me something important about gratitude: never allow the kindness you receive from strangers to become something you expect from them.
I left Sydney Airport with my DSLR back in my hands but also a little more careful, and a lot more grateful.
When I think across my journeys, those people appear everywhere.
A policeman letting me continue in Miami.
Police returning my DSLR in Sydney.
Someone helping me board in Lisbon after the gate had effectively closed.
A family sheltering me in Peru.
Locals giving directions, advice, food, help and sometimes their time without expecting anything in return.
I have also experienced theft, scams, fines, breakdowns and plenty of difficult moments while travelling. It would be easy to allow those experiences to make you cynical.
But after more than 90 countries, travel has actually left me with the opposite conclusion: There are good people everywhere.
Gratitude also changes the way you travel. You start saying thank you more often. You appreciate the receptionist who solved your problem, the waiter who stayed patient, the stranger who stopped, the policeman who helped and the person who gave directions even though neither of you properly understood the other’s language.
A traveller may cross borders alone.
But very few journeys are completed entirely alone.
The Lost Mumbaikar Reflections
It is actually easier to be a tourist than a traveller. As a tourist, most things are arranged for you The itinerary is fixed, the hotel is waiting, the taxi arrives, the guide knows the route, and if something goes wrong, usually someone is there to solve it.
Travelling, especially solo or on a family road trip is different. Suddenly the decisions are yours. The road closes, the weather changes, the car gets damaged, you miss a flight, you take a wrong turn or the carefully planned itinerary simply stops working.
That uncertainty is where these traits are built.
Across more than 90 countries, I didn’t suddenly become an experienced traveller because of the number on my map. Those countries were my classroom, and the mistakes were often my teachers.
Miami taught me discipline. Lisbon taught me humility. Sydney taught me gratitude. Peru taught me patience. Oslo taught me curiosity. Thousands of kilometres on unfamiliar roads taught me adaptability.
And when my children started travelling beside me, I realised they were learning too, not only from the beautiful places we reached, but from watching their father make mistakes, ask for help, change plans, recover and keep moving. But somewhere along the road, I stopped needing everything to go according to plan.
The Lost Mumbaikar says:
“A tourist travels with certainty; a traveller learns to become comfortable with uncertainty”
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): Tourist vs Traveller
- What is the difference between a tourist and a traveller?
There is no official line separating the two. For me, it is more about mindset than travel style. A tourist naturally begins with destinations, attractions and photographs. With experience, a traveller may become equally interested in local people, unexpected places, conversations and everything that happens between destinations.
- Is being a tourist a bad thing?
Not at all. I began as a tourist and still enjoy famous attractions and photographs. Being a tourist is often where the journey starts. The important question is whether travelling gradually makes you more curious, respectful, adaptable and open to the world around you.
- How can solo travel change your mindset?
Solo travel forces you to make your own decisions, solve problems, approach strangers, manage uncertainty and take responsibility when something goes wrong. These experiences can build independence, confidence, humility and adaptability.
- Why can road trips turn tourists into more experienced travellers?
Road trips expose you to everything between famous destinations: villages, local cafés, changing landscapes, unexpected detours and ordinary people going about their lives. They give you the freedom to stop, change direction and experience parts of a country that a destination-focused itinerary may miss.
- What qualities make an experienced traveller?
From my experience, six traits have mattered most: curiosity, humility, discipline, patience, adaptability and gratitude. They weren’t qualities I consciously set out to develop; years of solo travel and road trips gradually taught them to me.
- Why is humility important when travelling?
Because you are a visitor. Respecting local customs, speaking politely and treating hotel, airline, restaurant and service staff as people rather than simply as part of your holiday can completely change the quality of your interactions.
- Should you always follow your travel itinerary?
An itinerary should guide you, not control you. Weather, safety, local recommendations and unexpected opportunities can justify changing plans. Sometimes the journey you didn’t plan becomes more memorable than the one you did.
- How does travelling with children change them?
Travel exposes children to different cultures, lifestyles and realities. They can learn resilience when plans fail, empathy from seeing how other people live and gratitude when they recognise that their own circumstances aren’t universal.
- Does travelling to many countries make you a professional traveller?
Not automatically. A country count tells you how many borders you have crossed, not how much you have learned. For me, more than 90 countries provided the experiences and mistakes that gradually helped me become a more experienced traveller.
- What is the biggest lesson from becoming a traveller?
For me, it is learning to look beyond the destination. The photograph is still important, but eventually the road, the people, the mistakes and the unexpected moments become just as memorable.
Your Turn:
- Do you still travel mainly as a tourist, or do you feel you are slowly becoming a traveller?
- Was there one journey that completely changed the way you travel?
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