The generation that hitchhiked across continents in the 1970s didn’t produce better travellers by accident — they understood that getting lost was the entire mechanism of discovery

by Lachlan Brown | May 13, 2026, 10:53 am

Picture this: today’s travelers meticulously plan every detail, booking hotels months in advance, downloading offline maps, and reading countless reviews before choosing where to eat lunch. Now contrast that with the 1970s generation who stuck out their thumbs on highway shoulders with nothing but a backpack and maybe fifty bucks in their pocket.

They weren’t reckless. They were onto something profound that we’ve forgotten in our GPS-guided, TripAdvisor-verified world.

The golden age of getting gloriously lost

Back in the mid-70s, something extraordinary was happening. Young people were setting off across continents with virtually nothing. No smartphones, no credit cards, no safety nets. As historian Jack Reid notes, “In 1975, it had reached its most mainstream.” Hitchhiking wasn’t just transportation; it was a cultural movement.

Think about the sheer audacity of it. Lindsay Bamfield recalls her 1974 journey: “In 1974, we were allowed to take only £25 (about $50) in cash so the rest was smuggled out, plus a few Travellers Cheques. We had booked a train to Istanbul and from there on we found our way as we went. Buses, trains, rickshaws, motorbikes, you name it, we travelled on it.”

Istanbul. Then figure it out as you go. Can you imagine suggesting that plan to someone today? They’d think you’d lost your mind.

But here’s what that generation understood: the magic wasn’t in arriving at the destination. It was in the complete surrender to uncertainty. Every ride accepted, every wrong turn taken, every unexpected detour became part of the education.

Discovery requires discomfort

This is something psychology research consistently supports. Studies on personal growth show that people develop resilience, adaptability, and self-knowledge not when things go smoothly, but when they’re forced out of their comfort zones and into unfamiliar territory.

Think about anyone you know who has traveled to a place where nothing went according to plan — the apartment fell through, the job opportunity changed, even ordering coffee became an adventure in miscommunication. And slowly, they realized this was exactly what they needed. Being forced to let go of control, to accept that nothing goes exactly as planned, reveals something important: that’s actually okay.

This is what the 70s hitchhikers knew intuitively. When you’re standing on a dusty road with your thumb out, you can’t control who stops, where they’re going, or what stories they’ll share. You can only be open to whatever comes next.

The difference between tourists and travelers

There’s fascinating research that backs this up. A study analyzing 38 in-depth interviews with Israeli backpackers found that backpacking is a form of tourism characterized by various practices, rather than a distinct type of tourist experience. In other words, it’s not about where you go. It’s about how you approach the journey.

The 1970s hitchhikers weren’t just moving through space. They were practicing a philosophy. Geoff Nicholson captures this perfectly: “I was hitchhiking across the States — it was the 1970s — and I was a young Englishman ‘on the road’, having read too much Jack Kerouac.”

Too much Kerouac. I love that. Because it speaks to something deeper than just travel. It was about testing yourself against the unknown, about proving you could survive — even thrive — without a safety net.

What getting lost really teaches you

Think about it. When everything goes according to plan, what do you really learn? You confirm what you already knew. You stay within your comfort zone. You return home essentially the same person who left.

But when you’re lost? When you have to figure out how to communicate without language, find shelter without reservations, navigate without maps? That’s when you discover what you’re actually made of.

Many people have experienced this outside of travel, too. Feeling stuck in a dead-end job, spending lunch breaks reading about mindfulness and Buddhism, feeling completely lost in life. But that confusion, that sense of being unmoored, often becomes the catalyst for everything that follows. Sometimes you need to be lost before you can find a new direction.

The cost of too much certainty

We’ve traded spontaneity for security, and I’m not sure we got the better end of the deal.

Today’s travelers can preview their entire trip through Instagram before they even leave home. They know exactly what that sunset will look like from that specific viewpoint. They’ve read reviews of every restaurant within walking distance of their hotel. But what have we lost in this exchange?

Kenn Kaufman puts it beautifully when describing his own 1970s journey: “We were out to seek, to discover, to chase, to learn, to find as many different kinds of birds as possible.”

Notice the verbs: seek, discover, chase, learn, find. These are active words, exploration words. They require uncertainty to exist.

Bringing the hitchhiker’s mindset to modern life

Now, I’m not suggesting we all abandon our phones and stick our thumbs out on the highway. Times have changed, and that’s okay. But we can still embrace the philosophy that made those 1970s travelers so remarkable.

Start small. Take a different route home from work. Visit a neighborhood in your own city you’ve never explored. Strike up a conversation with a stranger in a coffee shop.

If you’ve ever been in your twenties feeling completely lost and confused, you probably thought something was wrong with you. But psychology tells us that confusion is normal. Feeling lost doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re ready for discovery. Sometimes the job you hate becomes the crucible that transforms you, if you’re looking for the lessons.

Try traveling somewhere without booking accommodation in advance. I know, it sounds terrifying. But that terror is exactly the point. It forces you to engage with the world differently, to trust in your ability to figure things out as you go.

Final words

The generation that hitchhiked across continents in the 1970s understood something we’ve forgotten: discovery isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something you actively participate in. And it requires being lost, uncomfortable, and uncertain.

They weren’t better travelers because they were braver or tougher than us. They were better travelers because they understood that the point wasn’t to eliminate uncertainty but to dance with it.

That idea should unsettle you.

Because right now you have a choice, and it’s not a comfortable one. You can keep curating your next trip through review scores and algorithm-fed recommendations, optimizing every hour of every day until there’s no room left for anything unplanned to reach you. Or you can walk out the door tomorrow with no destination, no backup plan, and no idea what happens next. One of those options is easier. The other is the only one that will actually change you. And you already know which is which — the question is whether you’ll do anything about it.

Lachlan Brown

Lachlan Brown is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Brown Brothers Media, a digital publishing network reaching tens of millions of readers monthly. He holds a Graduate Diploma of Psychological Studies from Deakin University, though his real education came afterward: a warehouse job shifting TVs, a stretch of anxiety in his mid-twenties, and the slow discovery that studying the mind is not the same as learning how to live well. He started experimenting with Buddhist principles during breaks at the warehouse and eventually began writing about what he was learning. That writing became Hack Spirit, a widely read personal development site, and his book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism became a bestseller. His work breaks down complex ideas into frameworks people can apply immediately, whether they are navigating a career change, a difficult relationship, or the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Lachlan splits his time between Singapore and Saigon. He writes about high-performance routines, decision-making under pressure, digital innovation, and the intersection of Eastern philosophy with modern life. His perspective comes from having built things from scratch, failed at some of them, and learned that clarity comes from practice, not theory.