.png)
Five Trips That Made Me Rethink My Life
The journeys that made me question everything.
Words by Nicole Kavander
This article contains adlinks
Summer is over. Everyone is back at their desks and LinkedIn is telling us to make September our most productive month yet. Naturally, this is when many of us begin to question our life choices. Calling it the post-holiday blues feels far too gentle.
By the time we arrive, we have seen the drone footage, saved the photographs and imagined everything in a flattering light. Yet these five journeys were more than I could ever expect. I have not sold my belongings or moved into a sleeper-train suite (yet). But each one changed my mind about something I thought I understood.
These are the trips that made me take a step back and go: “Why am I not doing this… all of the time?
1. Skýra Retreat, Finnish Lapland
.png)
At Skýra Retreat, it was −29°C when I stepped out of the sauna and into the ice hole. First came the shock. Then, very unexpectedly, quiet. Beside frozen Lake Norvajärvi, outside Rovaniemi, a former village school and a handful of suites sit in snow that seems to absorb every sound. A night manager will wake you if the aurora appears. There is also a champagne button, because inner peace need not become punitive.
Morning brought yoga in the pale winter light, a walk through the forest and a Finnish sauna ritual with löyly and birch branches before the door opened to the cold. Nothing was arranged to distract us from the darkness, silence or weather. They set the pace.
That evening, green light moved above the frozen lake. I stood on the ice with no artificial light around me, feeling the cold through my boots, then went back inside to a fire and a Negroni. It sounds suspiciously constructed when written down, but nature occasionally has excellent editorial instincts.
Skýra made me realise how often I confuse rest with entertainment. I make lists of relaxing things to do. In Lapland, for once, I did not need more input. I needed less.
2. The Royal Scotsman, Scotland
The fastest way to feel at home is to spend two days going nowhere quickly with people you have only just met. My partner and I boarded in Edinburgh with the Highlands ahead and no particular interest in getting anywhere quickly.
Photographs had prepared me for polished carriages and sweeping scenery. But not for life inside the train: dressing for dinner while mountains moved past, meals that ran happily into drinks, and staff who made every occasion feel effortless. We all boarded as strangers. Two days later, after shared tables, long dinners and a lot of stories, we said goodbye like a slightly overdressed international family brought together by tartan, Scottish produce and nowhere else to be.
We were moving, but nobody seemed particularly interested in arriving. Conversations lasted longer than the neverending hills rolling by outside. The train was romantic, theatrical and intimate because the journey itself was allowed to be the event. I usually treat transport as the mildly inconvenient part before the real trip begins. The Royal Scotsman made that idea seem terribly unimaginative.
3. Celebrity Beyond, the Caribbean
Before Celebrity Beyond, cruising was something I understood in theory. Ten nights in the Caribbean turned it into a personality trait.
The logic is almost suspiciously good. You unpack once, go to sleep and wake up somewhere new. Our Southern Caribbean sailing moved between St Maarten, Barbados, Saint Lucia and St Kitts. On sea days, the horizon replaced the itinerary and choosing lunch became the most demanding decision anyone expected us to make. St Kitts was our favourite. We travelled to a remote beach where lunch was homemade chicken and the drinks service eventually moved into the sea. There are few situations improved by being handed a shot while standing in the Caribbean, but this was one of them. By evening, the sand had been rinsed away, dinner required a change of clothes and the ship was carrying us towards another island. The day had been loose and spontaneous; the design, food and service on board never missed a beat.
I had assumed that real adventure should involve a certain amount of friction. Celebrity Beyond made me reconsider. Ease is not the opposite of curiosity. Sometimes it leaves more room for it. Ten days and several islands later, I left the Caribbean fully converted and mildly evangelical about the benefits of unpacking only once.
4. Hoshinoya Kyoto, Japan
Most hotels send a car. Hoshinoya Kyoto sent a boatman. My partner and I boarded Hisui, a traditional boat paddled along the Oi River without a motor. Check-in took place over matcha and sweets as the city disappeared behind us. No lobby queue, no keycard admin and no possibility of hurrying the river along.
At the ryokan, we crossed into a separate world. We changed into the clothes and slippers waiting for us and, almost without noticing, stopped looking at our phones. For the first time in years, I forgot mine existed. We heard the river, the garden and then the particular kind of silence that becomes noticeable once everything else has disappeared. The next morning, we were invited to meditate in the garden before breakfast. Sitting there in borrowed clothes and slippers, it felt as though we had travelled back in time. Not into a staged version of the past, but into a rhythm that had continued quietly without us. No photograph I had saved could show what it felt like to be removed from modern life.
I still love an itinerary, obviously. Personal growth has its limits. But Hoshinoya changed my idea of escape. It is not always travelling further. Sometimes it is forgetting the device in your pocket and letting breakfast wait for the garden.
5. Singita Lebombo, South Africa
I knew Singita Lebombo would be extraordinary. I did not expect it to be the best travel experience of my life. Our glass villa, designed like an eagle’s nest, hung above the N’Wanetsi River, with animals below and an outdoor shower open to the bush. The boundary between lodge and wilderness felt theoretical.
Before dawn, coffee and breakfast were packed, blankets laid out and seats warmed. Walter drove while our tracker Knowledge read prints in the sand, listened and waited. He turned one of humanity’s oldest skills into our route through the bush. With no convoys competing for a sighting, patience was part of the privilege.
Back at the lodge, music and loud laughter moved through the rooms; the staff never disappeared in the name of luxury. Victor anticipated hunger before we did, while the sommeliers built wine menus around our tastes. Beyond the lodge, Singita supports conservation and anti-poaching work, alongside a culinary school for local students, some of whom now work in its kitchens.
No image had prepared me for being there. I had never felt more looked after or less like the centre of the story. When we left, a tear ran down my cheek. Their knowledge, laughter and love for the land had made somewhere new feel like home. Singita left me with a definition of luxury that is difficult to photograph: being given everything while knowing none of it is only about you.
Holiday mood
Perhaps that is what I brought home from all five trips. Time can be spent rather than saved. Ease can leave room for curiosity. Ritual can quiet the need for control. Stillness does not require a programme. And luxury is most powerful when it protects something beyond the person experiencing it.
Now I am, like everyone else, back at my desk. The inbox has not become more poetic in my absence. But these trips left me with one deeply inconvenient piece of evidence: reality can still be better than the version you have spent years imagining.
My life choices are probably safe for now. My standards are not.
