18/08/2026
Tropical Ice speaks out...
IS THIS THE AGE OF MEANINGLESS TRAVEL?
Tropical Ice will be 50 years old in 2028. During those five decades we have watched travel change almost beyond recognition. Much of that change has been positive, but somewhere along the way, we wonder whether travel has also lost something.
We increasingly find ourselves asking a rather uncomfortable question:
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
There was a time when most people arrived on safari having already begun the journey months earlier. They had read about Africa and knew something about its animals, history and landscapes. They came with questions and had been looking forward to a trip like this for years. From a guide's perspective, our job was to take that curiosity and bring it to life.
Most importantly, people were travelling for themselves. We're not convinced that is always true anymore.
Today it is possible to travel enormous distances without ever becoming particularly involved in where you have gone. Travel has become easier to buy, easier to photograph and easier to broadcast, while becoming easier to experience without actually engaging with a place.
TRAVEL BECOMES MEANINGLESS WHEN HOW THE JOURNEY IS SHOWN BECOMES MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE JOURNEY ITSELF.
Social media is the obvious example. "Here is ME everybody, am I not amazing? Oh...and that behind me is the Taj Mahal...or Machu Picchu...or an elephant...or whatever."
We regularly watch people travel halfway around the world, encounter something extraordinary, and immediately reach for a screen. The photograph of the lion has become more important than the lion.
But it goes much further than social media.
Meaningless travel can be collecting countries, ticking off the big five, going somewhere because Condé Nast says you should, choosing a safari because of the bathtub overlooking the savannah, or buying "adventure" from a company that has systematically engineered every uncertainty out of it.
And the travel industry is at least as responsible for this as the traveller.
The luxury travel industry has become exceptionally good at manufacturing the appearance of experience. The boutique lodge craze has swept across Africa, putting the same infinity pool, outdoor shower, tasting menu, and Egyptian linen in Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania or Zambia, while the wilderness itself becomes almost interchangeable.
THE DESTINATION BECOMES THE BACKDROP TO THE PRODUCT.
Now there is nothing wrong with comfort. We rather like hot showers, and a cold beer after walking 15 kilometres through Tsavo is one of life's great pleasures. But the comfort should serve the journey, not become the reason for it.
IF YOU CAN TRANSPLANT AN EXPERIENCE WHOLESALE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY AND BARELY NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE, THEN PERHAPS THE PLACE ITSELF ISN'T TERRIBLY IMPORTANT.
You couldn't move Kenya's Great Walk of Africa to Botswana and call it the same trip. You couldn't move our Congo safari to Rwanda. In each case, the geography, animals, people, history, difficulty and unpredictability are the product. Walk across Tsavo and the bush dictates the experience. There are no guarantees about what will appear around the next corner. The distance, terrain, heat and animals all matter. Even the inconveniences matter. You can create the conditions for this experience, but you cannot manufacture it because you don't entirely control what happens. That uncertainty is part of what makes it an adventure.
Choosing the right journey is only part of it. How you travel matters too.
You have to be present enough to let a place affect you. That is increasingly difficult when every experience is interrupted by the urge to photograph it, post it or check what is happening somewhere else.
This is why the social areas of our camps are now "no device zones". We even have a basket at the entrance of the dining tent where we ask everyone to leave their phones during meals and campfire drinks. For a few hours each day nobody elsewhere needs to know what you are doing. We rarely have phone signal on the walk anyway, but even so, this really makes you focus on the place you are in, and the people sharing it with you.
Luckily, most of our guests don't need much convincing. They come because they genuinely want to be there. But the resistance this occasionally provokes is revealing.
There is an old climbing idea that how you climb the mountain matters more than whether you reach the summit. Yvon Chouinard put it rather more bluntly: “If you compromise the process you’re an as***le when you start out, and an as***le when you get back.”
We think the same is true of travel: the destination matters, but so do your reasons for going and the way you experience it once you are there.
So perhaps the question to ask before booking another trip isn't where should I go next?
It is the question we started with:
WHY AM I GOING?
If the answer is to understand somewhere different, to see something you have dreamed of for years, to learn, to test yourself, to disappear into a wild place for a while, or simply because the whole thing sounds like enormous fun, then go.
IF YOU DON'T HAVE A GOOD ANSWER, THEN DON'T.
