So You Want to Go Off the Beaten Path. How Do You Actually Do It?

A very fun interview and giveaway, a bunch of discounts, and exciting flight news for 2027.

Aug 27, 2026

Several weeks ago, after publishing a piece on Taiwan, a subscriber named Lori emailed me:

“I lived in Taiwan for a year, and while I traveled extensively, I never had an experience like the one you described. Reading your article made me realize how much I missed by not seeking out those deeper cultural connections. It wasn’t a feeling of regret so much as a reminder that the most meaningful travel experiences are often the ones we don’t know to look for, and that stayed with me because I’ve been exploring a similar question [...] Thank you for writing about travel in a way that encourages curiosity over checklists.”

It was such a thoughtful note to receive—I started Departure to dig deeper, to embrace that slower kind of travel. After some back and forth, Lori shared she’s a longtime movie producer building out a new travel venture called Odyssey Studio, offering personalized itineraries based on your interests rather than a specific place, like an interest in Indigenous loom-weaving versus saying “I want to see Peru.”

And travel that “encourages curiosity over checklists” is exactly the type of travel I want to spotlight. Her ability to explore off the beaten path—and how her brain works to actually make it happen—is inspiring, and an approach we can all learn from. Plus, getting the chance to cover a small woman-led business is deeply in line with my values, so I’m thrilled to share our conversation (and a fun little giveaway—keep scrolling) today. Enjoy!

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Lori, you’re a longtime producer, and our readers might recognize titles you’ve worked on. At your core, you’re focused on storytelling, and that’s led to your new venture, Odyssey Studio. Can you tell us more about that?

I think I’ve been doing some version of this for a long time. When I was a junior in college, I was in Taiwan studying Chinese, but I hated the way I was being taught. I quit the program and started taking modern dance and joined a theater group instead. Suddenly my Chinese took off because I was engaging with the place through something I genuinely cared about. That experience stayed with me: Sometimes the way into a place is through the thing you’re already curious about.

Fast-forward a few decades, and I’ve spent my career as a producer thinking about stories: how you research a world, find what makes it distinctive, and create an experience that takes an audience somewhere they couldn’t have gotten to on their own.

Eventually I realized I was doing something very similar when I traveled. I’d become fascinated by a book, a period of history, a craft, a piece of mythology, and follow that thread somewhere I never would have thought to go. That’s where Odyssey came from.

What if you designed a trip the way you might develop a story? Instead of starting with a destination, you start with the person—their curiosities and obsessions—and see where those threads lead.

You have this tagline on your site: “Most trips begin with a destination. The best ones begin with you.” I think that’s very true for most readers, myself included; I’m more likely to say, “I want to visit Albania” than around a specific interest of mine. How does shifting your travels to one based on interests change how meaningful a trip can be? What has that looked like with the folks you’ve worked with so far?

Recently, I was designing a trip around seeing the Northern Lights. I started researching all the possible places to experience them, like in Alaska for example, but when I discovered that Northern Scotland was a candidate, I got really excited. It immediately replaced my original idea of sitting in a glass-covered train in Alaska, because this particular traveler had a profound appreciation for Viking lore and Norse mythology.

So the research shifted. Instead of simply finding the best place to see the Northern Lights, I started following that Norse thread through Northern Scotland and Norway. Suddenly the Northern Lights weren’t just something we were going to see; they became part of a much bigger journey through mythology, history, culture and people.

That’s the difference I’m talking about. We didn’t abandon the original goal—we found a much more meaningful way to get there.

You mentioned you’re looking for “Founding Travelers” who can help tailor the Odyssey Studio experience, and they will receive deeply discounted opportunities to a custom-designed journey. For milestone events (or simply busy professionals), a personalized trip sounds super appealing. Can you tell us how it works, and what these Founding Travelers will help do?

This is a different way of traveling, and I’d love to get feedback before I launch more broadly. I’m creating a cohort of five Founding Travelers who will go through the full Odyssey process (from the initial conversation through the research and design of their journey) at a deeply discounted rate of $99, in exchange for thoughtful feedback on the planning experience.

The feedback is really about the process itself: What resonates, what could be clearer, and what would make the experience even better. The trip itself doesn’t have to happen immediately, since it’s about the process: how we discover what matters to them, how I translate those threads into a journey, and what it’s like to receive that finished Odyssey.

As I work with those first five Founding Travelers, their feedback will help me refine the experience along the way. Then I’ll invite a second cohort, the Wayfinders, also at a discounted rate. After that, it’s go time!

📍 If you’re interested in becoming a Founding Traveler, you can sign up here. Lori is also generously gifting an additional Founding Traveler spot for one lucky paid subscriber—if you’re a paid subscriber and want to enter to win, email me at henah@henahvelez.com with your full name, where you’re based, and your top three interests, and we’ll choose the winner next week.

email me to enter

I don’t want you to give away your entire “secret sauce” of course, but I am inspired by your approach to travel, and I want to give readers a sense of what they’d expect. If I came to you and said, “I want to design a 10-day trip for my husband and me based on our shared interests of, say, jazz music, history, and vegetarian food,” how would you move forward?

Jazz music, history and vegetarian food—I’d say yum to all! My first question would be, what kind of jazz? A specific era? Particular musicians? Because those answers could completely change where the journey leads.

Then I’d start looking for the connections between those interests. Maybe the history is tied to a particular place, musician or era. Maybe the food becomes another way into that culture: from street food to a Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant. But I wouldn’t know what those connections are until we talked. That conversation is where the Odyssey begins.

If I wanted to take this a step further and I said, “We love just watching live jazz at a place like the Spotted Cat in New Orleans, somewhere you feel alive and in the moment with other people. And we love food that's vibrant and flavorful; we'd prefer the mom-and-pop shop over fine dining any day.” Where would you go from there?

Oh, I love this. Now you've given me clues. You love jazz, but it's not necessarily about checking a famous jazz club off a list. You love the feeling of being somewhere alive, where the music is part of the place and the people. And your food choices tell me you're interested in the culture of a place, not just the food itself.

So now, I start pulling the thread. What kind of jazz? What musicians do you love? What other music do you listen to? What does "vibrant and flavorful" mean to you? What are the meals you've had while traveling that you still talk about?

And then I start researching. Maybe I discover a small town somewhere in Sweden that has an unexpectedly vibrant jazz scene—several little clubs clustered around a neighborhood with tiny restaurants and cafes. I'd want to know why that scene exists, who the musicians are, how it developed, and whether there's a story worth following.

Or, maybe your interests lead me somewhere completely different. Maybe we take a historical lens—say, jazz during Prohibition and the people and places that shaped it—and suddenly the journey has another dimension.

I don't know where the clues will lead when I start. That's the part I love. I'm following the trail until I find the journey that makes me think, oh, that's it.

How are you identifying places off the beaten path that are worth the time and energy? How can someone who wants to mostly plan their own trips but find hidden gems somewhere do that? Short of opening Google Maps and zooming in at towns outside of airport hubs, it doesn’t seem easy!

I’ve always done a lot of research when it comes to itineraries and places. A few years ago, I was traveling to the Amalfi Coast with my mom and sister, and we were planning to go to Pompeii. Then I found a blogger talking about Herculaneum, and a newspaper article that also discussed its value compared with Pompeii.

It took some mild convincing to skip the famous Pompeii, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. Pompeii is huge, and you spend a lot of time imagining what used to be there. Herculaneum is much smaller and astonishingly preserved: frescoes, signage, details of everyday life are still right there. I found it a much richer experience. Once I discovered it, I thought, “Wait, why are we going to Pompeii just because everyone goes to Pompeii?”

I like looking at the “weird” lists and the “hidden” lists. When I was living in Paris for five months for work, my husband was reluctant to visit because he had no interest in Paris. This was as shocking to me as it probably is to you. So I pivoted: We’ll do weird Paris. Then we got in a car and traveled all over France, going to places no one in the States ever seemed to talk about. We had the best trip.

So my research has to include what isn’t on the five or ten most popular things to do. That doesn’t mean those places are off limits. They may absolutely belong in someone’s Odyssey. But they don’t automatically make the cut just because they’re famous.

If someone loves catacombs, war museums and gorges over the Eiffel, that’s where I want to start looking.

Designing a trip around someone's real interests means getting to know them in a different way than a typical travel advisor would. What does that discovery process look like? My example of “jazz, history, vegetarian food” is fairly specific—what if someone comes to you with vague recommendations like, “I just want to explore.” How do you dig deeper?

I love that equally. Then I get to ask questions. I get to design their story. I’ll ask about all kinds of things, poke at where they’ve traveled before and where they might wish to go. Do they love hiking? Ziplining? Animals? Do they want to feed wolves and then go paragliding? Or are they more interested in art and want to feel like they’ve stepped into a painting for a week?

The conversation will reveal areas of interest, but it also tells me how someone likes to experience the world. Are they adventure seekers? Do they want to be immersed in culture? Do they love getting their hands dirty and making things? Do they want to meet people and hear their stories?

I’ll play a detective in a great travel mystery. I’m looking for the clues that tell me what kind of journey might make this particular person light up.

The editor and producer in me has to ask: Most great stories have structure (i.e., setup, rising action, climax, resolution). Do you think about a trip in that way; does it follow a narrative at all?

I do think about narrative and rhythm, although probably not in the literal “setup, rising action, climax, resolution” way. My producer brain is always thinking about pacing, contrast and what I want the traveler to feel as the journey unfolds.

I also think about what will become the memory of each day. On our Croatia trip, one of the things I remember most vividly was learning about an ancient form of air conditioning. It wasn’t necessarily the grandest thing we did that day, but it was the detail that stuck with me. The Red Museum was another one—something unexpected that became a real moment for me. So I want each day to have something meaningful in it, but that doesn’t mean every day needs a massive event.

And then I do think about the larger arc. I don’t want to stack a bunch of great experiences next to each other and call it a journey. I want there to be rhythm: moments of discovery, moments to breathe, changes in pace, and ideally something toward the end that feels like a payoff.

But unlike a screenplay, travel has an unpredictable collaborator: reality. Weather changes. Things close. You discover something you didn’t expect. So the structure has to be flexible enough to let the unexpected become part of the story.

I think that’s where my storytelling background really matters. I’m not just asking, “What are the best things to do?” I’m thinking about how the pieces work together to create an experience that feels like a journey.

Not every traveler wants a trip like this, and they might be better off going with a standard travel advisor or booking a straightforward hotel package—for example, a couple that wants to spend their entire honeymoon at one beach resort. What’s the type of traveler you’re looking for, who might be into the idea of interest-based story-driven travel?

That is absolutely true. An Odyssey traveler is curious. They want to go a little deeper, whether that’s as an individual, with a partner or friend, or as a private group or family.

What Odyssey is not is group travel made up of strangers. You won’t need someone waving a flag to gather a bunch of people together. (Did I just reveal my biggest pet peeve?)

Maybe you’ve traveled far and wide and you’re looking for something different. Maybe you haven’t traveled extensively at all, but you want a deeper connection to a place you’re visiting. You might be an adventure seeker, a history obsessive, a food lover, an art person, or simply someone who wants to follow a curiosity and see where it leads.

The common denominator isn’t how much you’ve traveled. It’s that you want to experience a place in a way that feels personal to you.

What does slow travel look like for you nowadays, particularly as you start designing trips for others?

I’m obsessed with tea. And chocolate. I would really like to create a trip where I could do a deep dive into either of those subjects.

I’m such a tea nerd that I’ll do multiple tests to figure out the right amount of water, temperature and tea, despite what the instructions say. Is the second infusion better than the first? Do I prefer twice as much tea as recommended? Right now I’m fascinated by a unique oolong being made in Japan that emulates the mountain teas of Taiwan. And I’m waiting on a delivery of tea that’s been aged in whisky barrels from the UK.

I’d love to visit tea makers, do tastings, meet tea sommeliers and really understand the culture and craft behind it. Or I could do the same thing with chocolate. I’m an equal opportunist.

My husband would absolutely hate this trip. Which makes it interesting. Maybe he could nerd out on vintage cars while I nerd out on tea. Tea and vintage cars. Chocolate and car racing. I think it can be done.

That’s actually part of what excites me about Odyssey. You don’t necessarily have to share every interest with the person you’re traveling with. The fun is figuring out how to create a journey where each person gets to follow something they’re genuinely passionate about, while still experiencing the place together.

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