You’re craving a vacation that’s a little different. But you’re hesitating — worried people will think you’ve turned into some matcha-sipping trend lover. And yet, behind that tiny dilemma, there’s a bigger question lurking: what does travel really mean today?

Picture this: atop a hill, a man in shorts stands next to a sheep. Socks pulled high, trail runners on, matcha latte in one hand, pointing at the view with the other. His Instagram caption? ‘Back to basics.’ It’s amusing, yes. But behind the beard and the tote bag, something real is happening. 

In a world obsessed with performance, travel is turning into a refuge for anyone who just wants to breathe, untimed.  

Just think about the Hyrox trend for a minute: thousands of city dwellers train to exhaust themselves more efficiently, to “perform” even in their leisure. The same logic shows up everywhere: optimizing what we eat, tracking every step, comparing recovery scores, checking our watch first thing in the morning to see if we slept “well.” Some even count how many countries they’ve “visited”.  

In Search of Suspended Time

Maybe this constant drive to perform is really just a sign of lingering fatigue. In trying to “live hard,” we forget to simply live. 

Real travel doesn’t work like that. No goals, no scoreboards. No promises of better—only different. Time slows, expectations vanish, and getting lost becomes the actual point. 

Spending a few days with a shepherd, stargazing with an astronomer, or learning wildlife photography in the Jura—as we offer at Odysway—isn’t about “having an authentic experience” or checking a box. It’s about unlearning speed. Letting the world exist without filters, captions, or stories. Walking without knowing what you’ll find—and realizing it’s enough. 

This kind of travel, often labeled as “alternative,” isn’t a hipster fad. It’s an attempt to repair something. Repair our relationship with time, nature, and other people. It’s an effort to reclaim our sense of wonder, dulled by endless scrolling and dopamine-driven algorithms. 

To truly experience something, you have to ditch Strava, the GPS, or even the plan. You have to accept not understanding everything, not planning anything. And it’s in that very discomfort that something happens: life itself, raw and unfiltered.  

No, you don’t have to be a hipster to spend your holidays with a shepherd. You just need a desire to return to what matters: real tiredness, paying attention to yourself and others, beauty unfiltered. Travel isn’t about escaping reality – it’s about coming back to it. 

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And what if this return to the real world was a way of becoming beautiful? That’s one of the questions Candice Gauch (SKEMA 2022) senior consultant at PWC and Miss Paris 2025 – explores in our podcast’ episode: is beauty a talent? She explores the subject through the lens of Barbie.  

Rethinking performance, too—that’s what a man and a woman do in two other interviews worth checking out: Philippe Peuch-Lestrade, the advocate of “integrated thinking,” and triathlete Léa Riccoboni (SKEMA 2018). While she measures every second of her life, she reflects on the deeper drive behind her effort. The starting of an inner journey of its own.  

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