Your travel questions, answered
Off-the-beaten path Japan experiences, traveling with POTS, Copenhagen swimming spots, Chaing Mai wellness recs, San Sebastian hotels, + more
It’s been a long time since I’ve answered reader questions—too long honestly, and my DMs and inbox have gotten quite full in the meantime. This might be one of my favorite things to do, because you ask about a place, I get to think and dream about the places I’ve been, the places I’ve sent clients, or the places I’m dying to go, and then hopefully this serves as inspiration for your next trip to somewhere unforgettable!
xx,
Bella
Have a question you want me to tackle? Email me at bella@mind.holiday or drop your question in my Substack chat and I’ll answer it in next month’s issue.
I would love some suggestions for special destinations that are less traversed by tourism and, especially, are not overwhelmed by tourists and influencer culture. Your Peruvian summer seems to be in this window!
This is my favorite question to answer, and I have so many answers.
Svaneti in the Georgian mountains. It’s a super rugged, mountainous region in the northwest region of the country with unbelievable hiking trails and rural villages that have been inhabited since the 9th century.
Kyrgyzstan is endlessly appealing to me—pristine mountains, alpine lakes (with Issyk-Kul being the second largest alpine lake in the world), overnight yurt stays with nomadic Kyrgyz families that still move their yurt homes seasonally with their herds of livestock… and you can stay with them! Ever since reading about the Kyrgyzstan Nomad Trail in National Geographic, I’ve wanted to hike part of the 2,000km trail network—it’s the longest in Central Asia.
Madagascar is high on my list. The tourism infrastructure is still relatively thin, meaning that a trip there still requires actual intention. Nosy Iranja is a sight I need to see with my own eyes, because it’s constantly ranked as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I also love that you can do a safari + beach combo trip without having to leave the island country. Voaara looks like an incredibly special stay.
Closer to home, there’s driving the Golden Circle route through Alaska and the Yukon. It’s a 350-mile, four day loop that’s part gold rush history lesson, part icy glacier-carved wilderness, filled with sweeping landscapes, and it has barely any tourist infrastructure to speak of. Not only is there a driving component, but you take a ferry into the deepest fjord in North America. There’s also the world’s smallest desert, and you could experience it with no lines and no influencers (yet). Summer is great, but fall is also an excellent time to go for foliage spotting.
Would love to hear what’s made trips memorable for you recently and what you’re prioritizing in travel. I loved your post last year on traveling intentionally!
Local experiences and unstructured time to wander. My philosophy hasn’t changed much since I wrote that intentional travel post, and I feel like the #1 thing driving how I travel recently is curiosity. I want to return from a destination feeling like I have a better understanding of what life is like there. I want to learn! I want to meet locals, to get a glimpse of the day in the life, to go to off-the-beaten path places. I want the weird and the wonderful and the wild. I don’t want to have a passive vacation where I just sit (although I do love some down time).
One very clear example from Peru: Spending the day with a group of female weavers and in a small village and being invited into their homes to see how they actually live. Was there a language barrier? Yes. But there was mutual understanding, and communication transcends language alone. We ended the day dancing and drinking Chicha and holding hands. People want to be seen and understood!
I remember you mentioning somewhere that you were recently diagnosed with POTS. Any travel tips for traveling with it? I was recently diagnosed.