Journey with Purpose: Returning to Slowness
March 2020. It has been a week since the pandemic became impossible to ignore, and the world is beginning to close.
Borders tighten. Flights disappear from departure boards. Countries start issuing travel warnings. One by one, the places I dream about become out of reach. Just a few weeks ago, I am researching my next trip. Saving hotels. Looking up train routes. Building itineraries.
Now I refresh the news instead. Nobody seems to know what happens next. Will borders reopen in a week? In three months? Next year?
Welcome, I am so glad your are here.
For the first time in my life, travel feels uncertain. Not expensive. Not complicated. Impossible. As travellers, we spend so much time looking ahead. The next flight. The next city. The next adventure. We are always moving toward something. Now, suddenly, there is nowhere to go.
So I stay home. And while the world outside grows quieter, something unexpected happens. I slow down. Not because I want to. Because I have to. At first, the stillness feels uncomfortable. I reach for my phone more often than usual. Scroll through headlines. Check airline websites. Refresh social media. Search for answers that nobody seems to have. The irony isn’t lost on me. The world is telling us to stay still, yet my mind has never felt busier.
We spend years believing that moving faster means living better. Wake up earlier. Work harder. Optimise everything. Fill every empty moment. Stay connected at all times. Somewhere along the way, being busy becomes something to be proud of, while slowing down starts to feel like falling behind. But what if the exhaustion so many of us feel isn’t a personal failure?
What if we have simply been living at a pace that no human was ever designed for?
The Travel We Can’t Take
The strange thing is that travel doesn’t disappear. It simply changes form. I spend evenings planning trips I cannot book. I watch videos of train journeys through the Alps. I save photographs of quiet villages in Italy. I reread guidebooks for cities that feel a million miles away. Travel becomes imagination. A form of escape.
Yet the more time I spend dreaming about future journeys, the more I realise what I actually miss. Not the airports. Not the passport stamps. Not even the destinations themselves.
I miss paying attention. I miss sitting in a café for an hour with nowhere to be. I miss watching a city wake up from a park bench. I miss long train rides where the landscape becomes the entertainment. Travel has always given me something that everyday life often takes away: presence.
Why I Started This Blog
This is a frightening time. Many people have lost their jobs (myself included). Many more worry about what comes next. Every day seems to bring new headlines, new restrictions and new uncertainty. I don’t want to pretend otherwise. Like many people, I am trying to adjust to a situation that changes almost daily.
One of the few things bringing me comfort right now is the act of escaping, even when I cannot physically go anywhere.
For a long time, I thought escaping meant getting on a plane and switching off for days at a time. But lately, I am beginning to realise that escape does not always require distance. Sometimes it only requires an hour. An afternoon spent planning a future trip. A travel documentary. A favourite book. A walk through a familiar neighbourhood with fresh eyes. A notebook filled with ideas for adventures that may have to wait.
That realisation is one of the reasons I start this blog. If I cannot travel right now, I can still explore. I can still learn. I can still dream.
Over the coming weeks, I want this space to become a small form of escape for anyone who needs it. A place for future itineraries, destination inspiration and travel guides. A place for stories from past adventures. A place for simple joys, slower living and practical ways to stay connected while the world feels disconnected.
Travel is not gone. It is simply paused.
The mountains will still be there. The cafés will reopen. The trains will run again. The destinations on our lists are not disappearing. They are waiting. And until the day we can explore them again, perhaps we can use this time to travel differently. Through books. Through photographs. Through imagination. Through curiosity.
If there is one thing this moment is teaching me, it is that travel is not only about movement. It is also about perspective. And that is something no lockdown can take away.
Thank you for being here.
Love, Malin
Take care of each other, wash your hands and start planning your next escape.
