Trip Set Who?!

I didn’t set out to become a travel coach. I didn’t even set out to travel at first – not in the ways I know are possible now.

I originally went on a 3-week holiday to Thailand, that sparked a travelling journey that spanned over a decade – leading to so many different trip adventures, experiences, challenges, interactions, and life-lessons along the way, quietly shifting how I saw travel, and life itself, ever since.  

I learned how to physically sustain life on the road and how to curate different types of trips, as well as gaining insight from the countless interactions with people from all over the world. I also learned from the trials and tribulations that this unique journey and way of living brought about, including the reverse culture shock in returning to environments that once felt familiar, but now felt foreign. 

And whilst those lessons were valuable, there was something deeper going on, a grander lesson. 

As I travelled, the importance of the where and what were shifting to something else, but I couldn’t quite name the shift underneath. Earlier trips seemed to be about escape. Then adventure. But then it was about something harder to articulate – a need to understand myself through movement, through discomfort, through being genuinely lost in a place where nobody knew me.    

What I noticed was a pattern, not just in myself, but in other travellers subconsciously looking for something ‘more’, yet often taken along by ‘performative travel’ – mirrored and led by their familiar, or bombarded with sensory novelty to feel busy.

I started to wonder what travelling was really trying to tell me. The draw of seeing new places, meeting other travellers, sharing similar stories etc. was starting to lose its appeal, but there was still very much a travel bug within me. 

It was now just searching deeper, rather than wider. 

Over time, I became very interested in the internal journey that accompanied the outward one. I started analysing my trips, and travel trips in general. I spoke with numerous budding and experienced travellers at different stages of their journeys. 

I found there were two clear groups. 

The first were firmly in the ‘Tourist Mindset’. On the surface they wanted their trips to feel easy – a break from the daily grind, seeing new sites, some sun etc. At first I thought I wanted the same. But looking deeper, something didn’t add up. If a trip away was meant to bring relaxation, a break from the norm, or joy in seeing something new – then why would we often return home and fall straight back into our set ways, often with less energy than when we left? Surely this type of travelling wasn’t actually recharging or changing us in the ways we hoped.  

The second group were different. There was a growing restlessness in them – a quiet dissatisfaction in seeing trips as pure escapism. The more conscious they became, the less a dopamine-fuelled holiday actually satisfied them. They were searching for something, even if they couldn’t name it yet. And so was I.  

TripSetGO exists because I wish something like it had existed for me – a guide that could have told me early on: this is where you are, this is why you’re drawn to it, and this is what a trip that meets you there actually looks like.

You don’t need more destinations. You need the right journey, at the right time, for the right reason. 

And I can help you find it!

Richly Wills