Few movements shook the pillars of society more than punk rock. Its anti-authoritarian and rebellious outlook sparked generations to question the status quo and assert their independence in the face of authority. Can the looming spirit of punk rock inspire us to shake down the assumptions of the mainstream travel industry and awaken the independent travel bug within?
Independent Travel Planning Gone Awry: A Cautionary Tale from Rise Against
Driving to work a few months ago, a song by the American punk rock band Rise Against popped onto the stereo. Although I had heard the song, “Last Chance Blueprint”, dozens of times before, I’d never listened carefully to the lyrics—its message, and particularly its value to independent travellers, completely escaped me until that moment.
A certain optimism—not entirely foreign to the would-be independent traveller—prevails in the song’s opening verse:
“Our plans are all laid out,
take all these unmarked roads,
we blaze the trails to places no one goes…”
Unfortunately, the hopefulness stops there.
In an all too familiar story, the protagonist, with his unrealized dreams and failed plans, soon admits defeat at the hands of the travel gods:
“But this blueprint’s faded grey
and here it seems like just yesterday
when we mapped out the details of our great escape,
But still these roads all beckon me
to uncover their mystery
but I fall like dead autumn leaves
and let the jetstream carry me…”
The depressing, yet poetic, end to this cautionary tale reminds independent travellers to—pardon my French—shit or get off the pot.
Forging future plans is fine and dandy as long as you actually follow through with them. Planning without execution is, at best, procrastination, and, at worst, the worst simply a lame cover-up for underlying anxieties and insecurities.
Travel plans don’t need to be perfect—hell, they don’t even need to be that good—they just need to motivate you to get off your ass and do what you will. And with that little allegory from modern music behind us, here’s what punk rock can teach us about independent travel…
Independent Travel: The Punk Rock of the Travel Industry?
While independent travel may lack the badassery and swagger of punk rock, the two movements share some basic values.
Arising from frustration with mainstream music, punk rock built its subculture around breaking with tradition and infusing it with a do-it-yourself and minimalist ethic. Independent travel, much like punk, discards the commercialism of the mainstream—wilfully ignoring tourism industry staples like pre-packaged tours, all-inclusive resorts, and so on—in favour of self-propelled travel planning and seeking out one’s own experiences on one’s own terms.
In the same way punk music spawned new subgenres, independent travel styles, like minimalist travel, thrust trip planning one step further, stripping it of unneeded elements—much in the way punk simplified classic rock—to reveal the bare minimum needed to travel.
For the true independent traveller, travel is never about country-counting, bragging rights, or any other nasty self-indulgent practices; at its core, it becomes a sum of incredible experiences and forging connections—an existential escape from routine, whether short-term or long-term, with the power to alter one’s perception of the world. Just as punk rockers soak their words with themes of liberation and freedom, for hardcore independent travellers, the message is much of the same: let’s do things our way and if it defies convention, too bad.
The independent traveller knows that there’s a world beyond what travel agents and even tourism boards present, and it’s that relentless pursuit of unknown possibilities that drives us to extend ourselves beyond our usual comforts. Much like the revolutionary music of those steadfast mohawk-clad innovators who paved the way, independent travel reveals an alternative—a true rebellion against the established rules of the mainstream, favouring the unusual over the expected and the genuine over the inauthentic. And for that alone, the spirit of independent travel, like spectre of punk rock, will not burn out anytime soon.
Do you think there are similarities between punk music and independent travel? Drop me a line below!
