Where Have all the Travel Blogs Gone?

I went to India recently. As most everyone does, I needed a visa, but unlike most people, I couldn't take advantage of their handy eVisa. Instead, I had to trek into town (1 hour) to wait in line (1.5 hours) to get in to be seen (1 hour), only to be told that I was missing the documents necessary to apply for a visa. What?! I had everything listed on the website?! Too bad, come back again tomorrow to do this all over again.

Turns out, there are a lot of requirements that aren't on the website. How did this happen? I googled incessantly to make sure there weren't more requirements, but I found nothing. A friend later informed me that if I were on the right forums and messaging boards, I would probably find the information I needed.

This is the gap that the travel blogs have left. Sometime over the last 2 decades, the blogger fell and the influencer rose. Aesthetics became prioritised over information; there's only so much you can fit in an instagram post. And the post has to grab your attention, promise you beautiful views and to become That Girl, as long as you take a picture at this precise latitude and longtitude. Grab your chance at virality with this expert photographer who will pull out all the stops to get your swing video. Become the main character. Look at these foods that are made for the camera, not your taste buds. Find a hidden gem that'll have all your friends cooing. But visas? Never heard of her.

Travel, the thing that was once touted as the thing that would help you grow empathy, learn other cultures (though that was always debatable), is now just another photoshoot backdrop. The semantics of travel are irrelevant. Getting there is the unshared detail of a great photo.

When I went to Paris, I could not figure out the metro system even though I speak French. My friend explained a slew of apps and I nodded, then headed to a ticket machine. This information would've been described in a travel blog somewhere.

Travel bloggers have probably fallen out of vogue because who is clicking on this stuff anymore? When people use tiktok as a search engine for the best places to take pictures, the effort of writing a whole blog probably feels stupid instead of a editing a few reused clips.

Even if there are social media pages that detail these travel, well, details, they're not well ranked against search engine's SEO. So they don't go viral, don't make it onto our feeds, and also don't make it onto the search engine.

Add a healthy dose of AI hallucination and faux blogs pulling information directly from AI (which then feeds into other AI responses), and now the internet is largely unusable, the consequence of which I most keenly felt when lining up for the second time in the cold London weather to beg for a visa.

This is all to say that life sucks and I miss travel blogs. I'm sorry I took you for granted and scoffed at how outdated blogs were. Please come back. I promise to treasure you this time.

What am I going to do about this? Probably nothing. Complaining into the void is a British pastime I have learnt to treasure. But if someone out there, particularly someone with a HK passport, was feeling the push to make a travel blog? Please do, and drop me a message.

Also, does anyone understand how the EU EES works? Asking before I end up in a long line for that one again.

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