In 1994, just after I graduated from college, I put on a backpack and set off to see the world. I climbed the Andes in Ecuador, taught English in Cambodia and spent months visiting monasteries in Tibet. It was the most transformative period of my life.
It also feels like a period from another era, and not just because of the amount of time that has passed. Now when it’s time to get away, I choose a destination that doesn’t ask too much of me and to which I don’t give much back. Instead of traveling to discover, I travel to retreat.
Rick Steves also experienced transformational travel when he was in 20s, but he never retreated from it, and he has been helping people to get the most out of their trips ever since. The prolific guidebook writer and beloved PBS personality (in a 2019 profile of Steves in this magazine, my colleague Sam Anderson lovingly called him “one of the legendary PBS superdorks”) sincerely believes that travel can make the world a better place, and make us better people. He’s 69 now, but his upcoming book, “On the Hippie Trail” — a collection of journal entries that he resurfaced while stuck at home during the pandemic — chronicles a journey he took from Istanbul to Kathmandu in 1978. It’s an inspiring read, full of the joy of adventure and discovery, and talking with him about it, and about his life and cancer diagnosis, helped me figure out what I had been missing in my own more recent travels and outlook.
I was reading your book, which is the diaries of a trip that you took in 1978 when you were 23 on what was called “the hippie trail.” When you reread those, what did they evoke in you, with the hindsight of age now? First of all, what kind of 23-year-old would write a 60,000-word journal while on a hippie bus going from Istanbul to Kathmandu? I was not a travel writer. I was a piano teacher. I was writing that for me, and when I read it, it was really insightful, if I might sound immodest. One thing I love as a writer is, you can’t go back to the United States and write it up. You’ve got to write it up right there, in the humid, buggy reality with all the cacophony of culture all around you. That’s where you take your notes and it’s most vivid. And I was doing that on that hippie trail, sitting there, watching the needle bend as it went into my travel partner’s arm at the border so he could get his shot because he didn’t have it on his yellow International Certificate of Vaccination. That’s a vivid moment, to think that you’re stopped on the border between Iran and Afghanistan and glad you don’t have the needle going into your arm.
Reading this book really brought me back. When I was 23, I went on my own version of the hippie trail. I went to different countries — I went to Asia — but the thing that changed the course of my life happened there. I was in Vietnam, and it was the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and I was not interested in journalism in any way, shape or form, and I happened to be at this bar called Apocalypse Now. Wow.
And I happened to run into a whole bunch of journalists who were there to commemorate the 20th anniversary, who had covered the war, and I hung out with them for a while. And that was my first exposure to journalism and being a foreign correspondent, which is what ended up being my career. And so it resonated so much reading this, because not everything ends up changing the course of your life, but the seeds of maybe what you’re going to become, you can often find them when you have these incredible experiences. It is a cumulative thing. These little seeds add up, and if you’re a good traveler, you’re more exposed. Some people, their wisdom is, don’t get on a bus if it’s too crowded. You might get pickpocketed. I love to be on a bus that’s so crowded that there’s people hanging outside the door when the bus takes off and then they settle in like cornflakes settle into a box, and there’s always room for one more body. That’s a beautiful part of the world that people who are too careful, they miss. But you have to be out, like you were there at that gathering of journalists on an anniversary. That was a lucky break for you, and it had a huge impact. And these little moments, as a travel teacher, I draw from for the rest of my days.
Travel teacher. Is that how you see yourself? I’ve only had two jobs, and they’re both teaching things I love. I taught piano, and I teach travel now. It was a big emotional deal for me to make the transition. I had to decide in 1980, when I was 25 years old: Am I going to be a piano teacher or a travel teacher? I had a recital hall in my little town. My students were giving recitals, and their parents were sitting on boxes of my first self-published edition of “Europe Through the Back Door,” and my heart was really in the travel more than in the piano teaching — so I gave up my students, and I turned my recital hall into a travel lecture hall, and we had a monthly world-travelers’ slide club. It met the first Sunday of every month. I learned a lot by that, and I learned a lot by 20 or 30 years of being a tour guide on a bus. That’s where you learn: How much of an attention span do people have? How many Madonnas and children can they see before they wouldn’t walk across the street for a Raphael? When I think of the trip that I used to do when I was starting my company — I just did “around and around Europe in 22 days,” and it was the best 3,000 miles that Europe had to offer. You start the trip, and people are wide-eyed and don’t know the drill, and then you teach them.
In those days when you were doing that circumambulation of Europe, what did you learn about Americans abroad? I had this sense that people were threatened by other cultures that did things well, and there’s this pride in America. Let’s say you’re checking in at a hotel, and you have to write down your birthday. My birthday is May 10, ’55, so it’s 5-10-55, and they go, no, it’s 10-5-55. They put the day before the month. It’s a silly little thing, but a lot of Americans would be bummed out at that. They draw back and they clench their fist and they think, We fought and died for your freedom and your way of life, and I’m not going to sit here and let you tell me that it’s not month, day, year! Americans are threatened by this, and you’ve got to tell them, no, they’re not saying they’re better than you; they just do it this way, and we are not the norm. This is very important. We do kind of lead the world in self-evident and God-given truths, but we are not the norm, and I just love to expose people to examples of things they would never encounter at home. Culture shock is a constructive thing. It’s the growing pains of a broadening perspective. To me, there are two kinds of travel: There’s escape travel, and there’s reality travel. I want to go home a little bit different, a little less afraid, a little more thankful, a little better citizen of the planet.
I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that that’s not how most people approach their vacations. Yep.
I’m thinking especially of going somewhere simply because you’re going to be able to post on social media about it. What do you think of how things seem to have changed, where the performative nature of travel has taken over? Or has it? Well, you know, it seems like it has, but I don’t get demoralized by that. People have a choice. You can have la-la land. You can go to your grave with a big barbecue apron like a Budweiser beer commercial [thinking] that life was good for you, and not learn anything, and really think you’re the center of this planet, which is fine, you know? I’ve just got this curiosity to get to know the rest of the world and to contribute in a way that makes the world a better place. Thomas Jefferson wrote, Travel makes a person wiser if less happy. I’ve always had this hunger to be more engaged. Not necessarily more happy, but more engaged. I always use this anecdote: I was really involved in the Sandinistas and the contras and all that. That’s kind of where I got politicized.
In the 1980s during the civil wars in Central America. Exactly. And I just felt responsible as an American taxpayer to know. I came to a conclusion then that every bullet that flies has my name on it, and we’ve got to kill innocent people occasionally to be safe — I’m not idealistic that way, you’ve got to have a military, and there’s collateral damage. But I’m responsible. And I wanted to get out there in person and see what’s going on. I started traveling with that in mind and I realized, Whoa, this is more complicated than I realized. I was very inspired by Archbishop Óscar Romero in Central America and liberation theology.
A Catholic idea very popular in the 1980s, that you help the poor, that you try to give liberation through spiritual teaching. Romero was assassinated. Right. And I was due for a vacation. I was fried, I was tired. I wanted to go somewhere with my family, and we were dreaming about Mazatlán. A pristine stretch of tropical beach swept free of local riffraff, little plastic straps on our wrists so we can get all the drinks we want without dirtying our fingers with the local currency — it was going to be a beautiful, hedonistic, relaxing vacation on a beach in Mexico. And then my friend said: It’s the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Romero. We’re going to march on the streets of San Salvador — do you want to join us? And I told my family, I’m going to be no fun on the beach. And it was one of the most valuable travel experiences I’ve ever had, to be there on the streets of San Salvador, eating beans and rice one day and rice and beans the next, covered in bug bites, marching with peasants to remember a slain leader. I was in my glory as a traveler there. Lulu, I’m in this sort of thing in my teaching where I remind people there’s three kinds of travel: You can travel as a tourist, a traveler or a pilgrim.
Explain the third one. Most travelers I know, they’re proud to be known as a traveler as opposed to a tourist: “I’m more thoughtful — I’m not just here to shop and get a selfie. I’m here to immerse myself in the culture and learn.” That is a traveler, to become a temporary local. A traveler learns about the world, but I think a pilgrim learns about themselves, and you learn about yourself by leaving your home and looking at it from a distance. You learn about yourself, I think, by trying to get close to God in your travels. I mean, for me the greatest church is walking on a ridge high in the Alps. The last thing a Lutheran’s going to do is raise their arms to the heavens, but I feel like doing that when I’m on top of an Alp! You just feel so good, and you just feel like this world is such a beautiful place, and it’s filled with beautiful people, and nature is so fragile, and it’s such a delight and a blessing. It changes you. It becomes pretty clear when you travel that we’re all in this together.
The philosophy is beautiful, this idea of communion with the world, connection with other people. But there is a shift happening in the world right now, toward isolationism, nativism, a fundamental suspicion of difference. We’re in a world that travels more than it ever has, and yet what seems to be happening is not what you would hope. More people are traveling than ever before, but there’s not more transformational travel than ever before. There’s this superficial Instagram, TripAdvisor kind of travel. It’s very interesting: In Europe, I find different places where suddenly, inexplicably, there’s a mob of people. What’s going on? Oh, that’s where everybody stands to get their selfie with the Matterhorn behind them. I was just in Zermatt, and there’s a construction project going on. I asked the locals there in this little Swiss town below the Matterhorn, what are they building here? Well, the Instagram people were clogging the bridge so people couldn’t cross the bridge when they’re going to work, so we’re making a platform so they can actually stand there and not obstruct traffic. It’s beyond me. I don’t get it.
But isn’t that what a guidebook is, ultimately? A guidebook tells you, this is the thing you need to go do in this particular place. Well, a good guidebook would tell you about why you want to go there other than to take a picture to show off to your friends on social media. You know, when I started traveling, there was a shortage of information. Now there’s too much information, and anybody can be a travel writer with social media. There’s this sort of spirit of crowdsourcing: I just want to know what everybody’s doing, and then that’s what I’m going to do. You’ve got this problem now, that everybody’s going to the same places at the same time.
We’ve seen protests in Europe over tourism. Barcelona residents this summer were squirting visitors with water guns and chanting things like, “Tourists, go home.” And this is driven to a certain degree by social media and bucket-list travel and everybody has to do this and has to do that. I like to say in my lectures there are two I.Q.s of European travelers: those who wait in lines and those who don’t. I see people walk by something, and they see a line, and they get in it before they know what the line’s for! I go the other direction when I see a line like that. The Colosseum in Rome is chaos. You’ve got to book in advance or you’re not going to get in there. A 15-minute walk away, the Baths of Caracalla are just as an impressive example of Roman engineering. A beautiful, peaceful place, never crowded at all.
Is there anywhere you regret having popularized? That’s a very interesting question. I’ve had a big impact on a few places that I’ve really made my marquee places. The Italian Riviera, the Cinque Terre, is a good example of that. When I first went there, it was one of the poorest parts of Italy, and you could hardly get there by car, and it was just forgotten, these amazing little villages surrounded by vineyards on the Italian Riviera. I discovered it for American travelers, and I raved about it, and I made a TV show, and I sent everybody there with my books, and suddenly people are wearing T-shirts that say, “I’ve seen Rome, Venice, Florence and the Cinque Terre.” I go there, and it’s crowded, admittedly. It’s commercial. It’s greedy. Now the local people are retired in the big city, and they’ve hired younger people often from other countries to run their little B. and B.s, and you’ve got all sorts of cute little boutique shops and experiences on the Riviera. The magic is still there. It’s morphed, and now they are affluent towns instead of poor towns, and now the new generation doesn’t even want to work in the fields. They turn their back on their vineyards they inherit from their parents. They used to be beloved.
Wait, I’m hearing a lot of different things. There’s the good stuff: They’re affluent. But there’s the bad stuff — their way of life is changing, which is at the center of this industry that you’ve given your life to. I wish Europe was an oasis with women with jugs on their heads getting water, that idyllic Old World thing, but it’s not, and tourism is a big part of the economy. I’m kind of perplexed about it. Occasionally, I find a place that cannot handle the crowds, and I will not write it up. It’s just too fragile. Occasionally, I find a place that doesn’t want the crowds. That’s pretty rare, to be honest, and I don’t write it up, because I don’t want to send people to a place where they’re not welcome. I would say: There’s good tourism and bad tourism, from the point of view of people who live in these towns, and the people who are angry with the tourists are not angry with my kind of travelers, who come in and stay in a hotel and buy dinner and are curious about the culture. What they don’t like is people who blitz in by cruise ships or tour buses, that stay in a big, modern hotel outside of the city, and the people don’t leave anything in the town except their congestion.
I want to return to the question of the world and how it’s changing, because you responded to my question about nativism and fear of difference by talking about social media, but I think there’s something more fundamental going on. I mean, I’ve sat at the foot of melting glaciers in the Andes with someone who is seeing it and says, I don’t believe in climate change. Perhaps you might be overstating the transformative power of this thing that you do. It’s remarkable to me how people can travel and not be impacted by what they see. My challenge is to try to inspire people to be thoughtful. The most frightened people are the people who have never traveled, whose worldview is shaped by commercial news media. And the people that are not afraid are the people who have been out there and met the enemy. My most powerful travel experiences have been going places where I’m not supposed to go: Cuba, Palestine, Iran. The friendliest people, the most curious people, the people that need to meet me and I need to meet them. When they meet me, it’s tougher for their propaganda to demonize me, and when I meet them, it’s harder for my country’s propaganda to dehumanize them. It’s a powerful thing.
You have traveled all over the world, and yet you have always lived in the place where you grew up. Why is that? I don’t think I have an agenda to live in the place I grew up. It’s just — I’m settled here. I look out my window right now, and I can see what was my junior high school. [Steves shows me the view outside his window.] I had to run around that track when I was in seventh grade.
Most people would not want that memory. [Laughs.] That’s a bad memory. I’ve always worked on the same street. I can walk there in seven minutes from my home. This is where I’ve got friends. This is where I know the bar. This is where I go for my old-fashioned American-style greasy-spoon breakfast. This is my home.
You’ve been very open about receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer. How are you doing? Well, thank you. I’m doing as well as you can be doing when you have prostate cancer. A month ago I said goodbye to my prostate. I see it as a journey. I don’t speak the language. The locals are friendly. I don’t know exactly where it’s going. I’m not in control of the itinerary. I want to tackle it with what I consider a traveler’s mind-set. But it’s scary at the same time.
Has it given you more of an urgency to do things you haven’t done before? No, but it gives me an awareness of what you might regret when you’re wrapping up your life. You know, you think about that.
What have been the sacrifices of being on the road so much? Because you have spent such a huge portion of your life going out elsewhere and discovering. There are regrets. It has not been good for my family. I got divorced. It has not been great for relationships with loved ones. It’s a choice you have to make. You know, I would love to be the person I was before I was a travel writer. I would have had a very, very beautiful life being a piano teacher and coming home every night for dinner and mowing the lawn and joining clubs and being regular and reliable. But I’ve chosen a different path. It’s a mission for me. And I don’t spend a lot of time explaining to people why my values are the way they are, my priorities are the way they are. And in a way I’m sad about it, but again, you have to make a choice.
You used two different words: mission and choice. Mission sounds as if it’s a calling, and that it doesn’t feel as if it’s a choice. That’s interesting. Yeah. It’s almost a calling from a pastoral sense or something. This is why God put me here. It gives me energy. It’s like breathing straight oxygen. And I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but it fits me.
If you couldn’t travel anymore or you had to travel differently because of age or sickness, do you worry that would be a big identity shift for you? I’ve thought about that. I would welcome the day, strangely, when I could not travel anymore, because it would open a gate of things that I’ve not done because of my love for travel. I’ve got a great piano sitting here. I don’t play it enough. I’ve got a cabin in the mountains. I’ve got an amazing girlfriend. I’ve got a wonderful son and daughter and a grandson. And if suddenly I couldn’t do my work anymore, I don’t think I’d miss a beat [laughs], much as I love my work, much as I can neglect things that other people would think, Boy, what an odd character that you would not value that. You know, I took a one-week hike around Mont Blanc with my girlfriend, Shelley. It was a great thing, because hiking around Mont Blanc, there was no research I could do. I wasn’t going to write a book about it. It was just pushing me to the limit with what I could do physically. And I was in a whole different world. I was in tune with different things in my body. I was taking time to do things that were not productive in this Rick Steves way that I’m so focused on. And after that week, Lulu, I just thought: Wow, I was so into something I didn’t know I could be into. A long distance hike with one person, learning nothing of value, really, for my work. Just realizing I could do it. This world is such a beautiful place to experience, and there are dimensions of experiencing this world that I have yet to try.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations. Listen to and follow “The Interview” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music or the New York Times Audio app.
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