Anyone planning a trip around the world or a long trip tends to fall victim to excessive planning.
In the first week we drive from point A to point B and in between we see the following sights. Then a month later we have to be at point C, otherwise we miss a great event there. It's best to use one or the other route planning tool and plan the roads as well. You want to avoid the highways if possible and rather drive along a beautiful country road or better yet gravel road.
Of course, that is one way to plan his trip and also makes perfect sense for a short trip or when not the way is the goal, but only the destination, the goal is. We have met in Alaska motorcyclists who drove in 3 weeks from Miami in Florida to Prudehoe Bay and back. A distance of about 17,000 km. So they sat approx. 800-1,000km each day on their motorcycles and bretterten, what a surprise, only over the highway. When asked what they had experienced, they just looked at each other questioningly. In the end, except for a few photos and the knowledge of having been at the northernmost point you can reach by vehicle in North America, nothing will remain of the trip. Not quite. The bank account also got a big hole.
To have something lasting from your trip you always get the tip: Go slow!
And it is true. If you want to get involved with the country and its people, the following applies to long-term travel: "No plan survives the first contact with the enemy" (Carl von Clausewitz). Our original plan was not that detailed, but we also wanted to go to Prudehoe Bay by the direct route. However, this plan did not survive the first contact with Canada. The weather had something against it. So 8,000 km "detour" to the east. The list of our detours has become very long in the meantime. We have not regretted any of them so far.
Of course we knew the tip to drive slower already before our departure and wanted to consider it. Unfortunately, it was harder than expected, especially in the initial euphoria that it finally starts. In addition the unconscious fear to miss something mixes itself. So, especially in the first months, we did a lot more kilometers per day than we do now. When we took a break for two or three days, we almost had a guilty conscience.
Planned chaos
Slowly, however, we have learned that we experience more with "go slow". Accepting a spontaneous invitation to a dinner or a birthday party or rather extending our stay at the beach by one night is something we now do without a guilty conscience.
In some cases, this means consciously making a decision to skip something else, but since our planning horizon usually extends only one day into the future, we no longer have the feeling of missing out on something. For those who are afraid of not doing anything without planning, we can only say one thing: we hardly get to do the things we have planned because the universe has something against it. Out of five days on a campground in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, we had one day where we could do something for ourselves. On one day we were invited to a Mexican birthday party, on another we were "forced" by a couple to have coffee and cake and dinner, a boat trip was not to be missed either. If it hadn't been so windy, we wouldn't even have had the one day for ourselves, since we also had an invitation to go fishing.
However, our lack of planning does not mean that we are planless. Our planlessness always understands itself within a given framework. Also we have dates, which we must keep. Be it to pick up something from a certain place at a certain time or that we are only allowed to stay in a country for a certain time. In between these milestones, however, we have surrendered our planning to the universe. Furthermore, we have reduced our goals. We now have 3-5 things per country that we absolutely want to do there. This does not only sound little. It is also little, if you consider that we stay in most countries for 3-6 months.
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