Backpacks & Broom Cupboards: How to Explore Without Leaving Home

Travel, curiosity and wonder from the comfort of your chaos.

In the days when a backpack meant freedom and the open road was a rite of passage rather than a feature of Google Street View, the idea of travelling was intimately tied to the act of going somewhere. Preferably somewhere dusty, sun-blasted, and marginally dangerous. But then something revolutionary happened. The world, in all its eccentric, exotic, and occasionally exasperating detail, came to us.

It’s not that we stopped moving. Flights got cheaper. Instagram filtered the Sahara into something familiar but slowly, almost imperceptibly, the idea of what it meant to travel shifted from geography to curiosity. And for those of us currently sitting in what could generously be described as a “multi-use storage nook”—less Indiana Jones, more Ipswich B&Q—the home office has become the new frontier.

I say this as someone who recently did travel. Back from Taiwan, no less. Two long-haul flights totalling just under 18 hours, held together by three curious hours of wandering around Dubai Duty Free—an environment that smells of every perfume you’ve never bought and every snack you didn’t know you didn’t need. The entire journey was an exhausting blur of airplane “food” (a word I now put in quotes for legal reasons), smiling and nodding at people I couldn’t escape quickly enough, and a kind of limping walk that suggested either athletic injury or ancient curse.

My legs gave up somewhere over the Caspian Sea. My patience somewhere around Gate A12.

But here’s the kicker: after all that, after the turbulence, the tray-table indignities, and the vague despair of someone eating tuna next to me mid-flight, I sat at home in my kitchen and felt—oddly—more at peace. It was here, not 30,000 feet up or 3,000 miles away, that I found myself once again travelling.

The act of exploration—true, giddy, open-mouthed exploration—has always been less about the visa stamps and more about the vision. And in this age of streaming documentaries, 3D museum tours, and the gloriously democratic rabbit hole of YouTube, curiosity has found itself uncaged.

Take, for example, Tuesday evening last week. I had no intention of leaving the house. Dinner was an uninspired plate of beige carbohydrates. But within 20 minutes of clicking around the internet with the distracted precision of a man avoiding spreadsheets, I was deep in the Carpathian Mountains, watching a Romanian shepherd sing to his dogs. Half an hour later, I was learning about the mythological origins of Mongolian throat singing from a man named Sergei, who filmed the whole thing on a Nokia circa 2003. It was, in short, marvellous.

And no queue. No jet lag. No overpriced airport sandwiches with the molecular integrity of tapioca pudding. Just wonder—unfussy, unfiltered, and unrelenting.

There is, of course, a type of romantic who insists that unless you’ve physically been somewhere, you haven’t really been there. These are the people who hike with sticks made of carbon fibre and speak of Wi-Fi blackspots as though they were religious epiphanies. I admire them. I do. But there is something equally noble—if less photogenic—about finding awe in the everyday.

Because the truth is, travel has always been more about the traveller than the terrain. We take our preoccupations with us. The man sulking in Venice about a late train is the same man sulking in Croydon about a missed bus. Likewise, the person who finds beauty in the curl of steam from a chipped teacup is also the one who gasps at the light over the Andes.

This is not a manifesto against travel. By all means, go. Pack the bag, board the plane, lose your luggage in Geneva and your temper in Naples. But don’t imagine for a moment that the act of travelling is a prerequisite for the state of wonder. That, my friend, is portable. And free.

All you need is curiosity. And maybe a decent Wi-Fi connection.

So here’s to the home office broom cupboards, the bedsits, the cramped flats with views of brick walls and possibilities. To the restless minds who wander without moving. To those who, stuck in traffic on the A1, are secretly navigating the spice markets of Marrakesh in their minds.

Exploration isn’t an itinerary—it’s an instinct.

And in this chaos, in this glorious domestic sprawl of mismatched socks and unpaid bills, we can still travel. With our minds, our screens, and the occasional daydream that smells of jet fuel and grilled halloumi.

Backpacks are optional. Curiosity is not.