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Notes -
Pretty much, yeah. Once I've decided to plan some kind of trip I go all-out, and it also helps that I trawl every square inch of Google Maps extensively in my free time when I don't have anything else to do, and just put pins in every single landmark that looks interesting and that I'd like to see. I hardly watch TV or engage in other passive activities to relax after work, I get bored by that easily, and one of the activities I engage in for fun (aside from researching a bunch about whatever niche topic catches my fancy) is to stake out possible destinations from my armchair. I do this even when I lack travel plans.
It's surprisingly easy to thoroughly map out countries - it's almost a mediative affair, in fact. You build up a gigantic reservoir of interesting sites after even just two months. After a while you get good at it - you can eventually identify the nature of buildings and even natural sites from how they look from the air, temples and traditional houses and so on, and can do further research on them on that basis. I've had family members ask me to plan their trips on their behalf. I come back to them with a gigantic slate of destinations, and see which ones they like.
This level of sheer autism certainly isn't for everyone and I don't expect everyone to engage in this kind of planning, but it works for me. And it feels better in my experience, less like you're getting a surface-level tourist view of a certain destination and more like you're actually experiencing a place outside of the heavily trafficked destinations where everyone gets shunted to. Also, less crowds. Fuck crowds.
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