The Trip You Don’t Post
Why leaving your phone behind might be the best travel experience you’ll ever have.
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, did it happen? If you went somewhere and didn’t slather it all over Facebook or Instagram, did you really go?
Phone cameras have gotten good. Really good. They shoot cinematic 4K video, capture sunsets better than many painters ever could, and make breakfast look like art. Basically, we’ve all become part-time photographers, part-time filmmakers, and full-time content creators…even when we don’t mean to be.
We tell ourselves it’s about “remembering the moment,” but let’s be honest: most of those photos never see daylight again. They vanish into the digital abyss, one forgotten cloud backup at a time.
The irony? While we’re so busy trying to capture the moment, we forget to live it.
You don’t have to become a total digital hermit to fix this. Start small. Leave your phone behind when you go out for dinner one evening. Take a morning walk without checking your messages. Or, if you’re feeling bold, spend an entire day exploring somewhere new without your phone, your drone, or your camera.
At first, it’s likely to be very uncomfortable. You’ll reach for your pocket out of habit, like a phantom limb. You’ll wonder if you missed a text, or whether someone posted something you “should” see. You might even feel a little exposed…like you’ve lost a safety net.
But I guarantee that something incredible will happen after a while: the noise fades. The world sharpens. The background becomes foreground again. You start noticing.
The conversation drifting out of a café that you hadn’t noticed before. The sound of footsteps on a creaking wooden floor. The faint smell of something being grilled three blocks away. All the things that get buried under notifications start floating back to the surface.
During the pandemic, I was doing a series of hikes in an attempt to keep “exploring” while stuck at home. I wanted to hike every street in Washington, DC, which meant eventually having to go to the “dangerous” parts too. On Father’s Day, I went for a long solo hike in the neighborhood that everyone (including a few police officers who stopped me) warned me not to go through. The kind of place people describe with hushed tones and vague hand gestures.
And because I wanted to really see it (and let’s be honest, expensive phones are theft magnets) I left my phone behind. Was that smart? Probably not. But very often the best stories start with questionable decisions.
Without a screen to check, I noticed everything…the cracked paint on aging houses, the rhythm of basketballs echoing in a park, the smell of charcoal smoke in the distance. At one point, I caught sight of a big group of people having a backyard barbecue.
I slowed down. Our eyes met. I’m pretty sure while I was thinking “this might not be good” they were thinking “what’s HE doing around here?” …and before I could overthink it, I just blurted out, “DAMN THAT SMELLS GOOD!”
For a moment, everything froze. Then, laughter that I can still hear in my mind years later. A few minutes later, I was in a stranger’s yard, balancing a paper plate piled high with burgers, potato salad, greens, talking about life, work, and family. The things that connect us as humans. The things that all of us have in common.
It wasn’t a travel experience in the traditional sense…no landmarks, no itinerary, no souvenir stand. But it was real. The kind of encounter you only get when you’re looking up, not down.
I get it, photos are powerful. They freeze time, they help us remember. But sometimes, the act of photographing becomes the act of distancing. You start chasing the perfect composition instead of the perfect moment.
Some of my favorite travel memories don’t have a single picture to go with them. A sunrise in Australia that I watched with a hot coffee in hand and both feet buried in the sand. A river in Botswana where the water glowed pink at sunset. A stranger on a dock in The Gambia who greeted me with a handshake that said everything words couldn’t.
Travel doesn’t have to be about collecting proof. Sometimes it’s about collecting presence. Because years later, you almost certainly will forget what the photo looked like, but you’ll remember how the air smelled, how the light felt, and how it was to just be there.
✨ Your turn:
Have you ever left your phone behind on purpose? Did it change what you saw — or who you met?
Great post. So well written. It’s important to really experience moments. Love the backyard barbecue story.