Traveler Profile: The Spiritual Traveler

Last Updated on August 16, 2022 by Adam Watts

One type of traveler you’ll encounter is the spiritual traveler. But the spiritual traveler only exists in a specific few places. Never walking down La Rambla in Barcelona, or taking a photo with Spider-Man in Times Square, or in the lobby of your local Hilton.

One place you will find the spiritual traveler is in a hammock in a hostel in Central America. Now let me tell you about Stefan.

I met Stefan in a hostel in Central America. He was lying in a hammock, fingers locked behind his head, staring vacantly at nothing, a smug smile curled at his lips.

“Hi! I’m Stefan,” he said, with the unmistakeable air of someone with no anxieties. “Who are you? What’s your story, my friend?”

“I, umm, my name is–”

“Did I ever tell you about the time my shaman and I did ayahuasca in the foothills of the Andes?”

“I, err, no, you didn’t. I just met you literally eight seconds ago…”

“Ha! Yes, I know. And it’s amazing how we’re bonding, right? It’s like our souls are connected somehow. I think all our souls are connected in a way, right, don’t you think? Cut me and I bleed, and in a way you bleed too. It’s tragic, but it’s beautiful. That’s life I guess. At least it is if you live it right. So many people waste their lives by not living, you know what I mean?”

“I guess?” I said, for lack of any other idea.

“Don’t guess, my friend. You should know. Take from your heart the knowledge you need. Feel that you know, and you will know.” A pause. “Do you smoke? Most people in this hostel smoke. But I don’t. My spirituality doesn’t come from drugs.”

“But, but ayahuasca…?” I trailed off. I resisted the urge to also ask, “if you don’t do drugs, why bring them up, you annoying sack of–”

“Oh, ayahuasca is different. You have to do that once, to get to know yourself deep down. The first time you do it, it’s a ritual, it’s not just a drug, it’s an experience. It’s hard to describe, and it’s impossible to understand unless you’ve done it.”

Despite Stefan’s insistence that everyone is connected, I felt decidedly more unconnected to him than possibly anyone I’d ever met. Even that dog rabidly kicking itself in the head in the market earlier seemed more like kin than Stefan. I wandered as slowly as I felt permissible to the kitchen to get a beer. When I returned to the outdoor patio area, Stefan was talking at a pair of impressionable gap year backpackers who seemed enamored by his ramblings.

“…and so I became more and more of nature, of myself.”

“Mmhmm, yes, yes, that makes sense. That sounds incredible,” Gap Year #1 said. “Totally,” said the other, who was curling her long hair around a finger.

“I actually just started praying four days ago in San Marcos, on the edge of Lake Atitlán, in Guatemala. Have you been? It really let me get in touch with the earth. I’ve always been spiritual, even as a child. When I could barely yet walk I used to spend hours staring at the gate at the end of our garden, dreaming of escaping, going somewhere I could just be me.”

Gap Year #2 marveled, “Oh wow, that’s interesting. An existential crisis as a toddler, that’s so unique.”

So many travelers that encounter the spiritual traveler are young. Teenagers on gap years, Americans not old enough to legally drink in their own country. These people are susceptible to what the spiritual traveler is peddling: bullshit. Spirituality in and of itself is a noble thing, a selfless thing. But the self-righteousness of the spiritual traveler is maddening. They insist that to spend even three seconds looking at Instagram is a sin worthy of death, and god help you if they overhear you talking about your favorite movie or TV show.

If people like Stefan want to commune with nature, I would urge them to please do so quietly, away from the rest of mankind. My suggestion for you, dear reader, when you next find a spiritual traveler, as soon as they mention a “perfect place” like San Marcos in Guatemala, is to gently suggest if it was so perfect, they’re wasting their life spending time anywhere else.

Spiritual travelers are invariably childless and child-phobic, so their only means of reproduction is infecting impressionable young people, whom we must protect. If enough of us urge them to live permanently in places like San Marcos, maybe one day we’ll be able to sneak in and lock the door from the outside and leave them to harmonize with themselves. That’s what they claim to really want, after all.

For more on annoying traveler types, check out The Wannabe Kerouac.