Travellers’ Top Trumps, the new favourite game of millennials that sums up our global mess

“Have you done India?” I heard being asked from a nearby table across a coffee shop in Sri Lanka recently – my ears pricking up at the boastful conversation emanating from below a mop of blonde dreadlocks. On the ground beside me, a pair of twenty-something Brits were discussing their recent travelling conquests around the globe, as they sat, anklet deep, in the soft sand – their turmeric lattes, dusted in cinnamon, glowing rusty auburn in the fierce tropical sun. “Yeah, I did India in, like, a fortnight. I’ll do Thailand in 10 days.”

It was a lovely scene, indeed – lapping waves and rustling, lofty palms. But that choice of words – “done” – the cynic within me me was riled. When did this enter travelling lingo? Why have countries, cities and regions become places that must be completed and ticked-off – like the chronological, finite levels of a videogame?

I confess to once viewing the world similarly; as a place that I had to try and see all of. I hoped this would make me a more rounded, experienced traveller – but as my bravado has mellowed, I can’t help but think that this philosophy is wholly unhealthy; for myself and the planet. And don’t think I haven’t considered how rich this now sounds coming from someone who travels itinerantly for a living.

As a mostly solo traveller, subtle eavesdropping is one of my favourite pastimes. And while I sit and write copy or edit audio on my laptop, I’m often secretly tuning into the conversations around me in departure lounges, cafes and bars. More and more I’m hearing this word “done” – as though two weeks is ample time to digest and understand a country as rich, diverse and complex as somewhere like India, before then moving on to the next nation-shaped prize.

Perhaps, very delicately, this also plays into the global mess in which we now find ourselves? An era in which countries, cultures and nationalities are simplified and homogenised in political rhetoric, when, in reality, our planet is distinctly more complex.

People used to name-drop as a means of showing off, but these days, place-dropping is all the rage. Mingle with millennials, especially, and the conversation will soon become an impromptu game of travellers’ Top Trumps. All substance and context is often lost from travel chat – instead, it’s a slap-dash verbal onslaught in which contenders attempt to outdo each other. Tulum trumps Cancun. Bhutan beats Nepal. Svalbard triumphs over Lapland.   

I suspect this culture has been fuelled by the proliferation of ‘listicles’ and the “must do” narrative of the modern travel media industry. Where lengthy prose has been shunned for thrifty blurb. A culture in which we must do hundreds of things “before we die” – instead of fewer, distinctly more rounded and worthwhile experiences. We increasingly live in an age of quantity, not quality.  

Furthermore, tour operators depend upon cash flow and repeat business – a turnover of destinations to get done, before selling you the next place. All of this feeds into the worrying rise of overtourism and crowding at beauty spots around the world. We must now do everything that everyone else has done before. And tell everyone about it, immediately.

I’ve previously written about the negative impact of social media upon the travel experience. But compared to listening to someone massage their ego with a list of destinations they’ve “done”, I’d argue, in this specific case, that platforms like Instagram can be extremely useful.

We live in an era in which the ritual of catching up with friends has been cheapened, because most of us are following each other’s lives from the palms of our hands, on an hour-by-hour basis. Nevertheless, having one eye on their holiday snaps does save us the rigmarole of listening to them reel off a routine of travel clichés at a party, purely out of social politeness.

As a teenager I liked the idea of trying to see every country on the planet, but the older I grow the more I realise that this is a distinctly selfish and self-absorbed conquest. I’d rather know fewer places, better – even if that does mean, for me, some of it will remain un-done.