Extreme day trips allow you to travel anywhere—as long as you’re back home at bedtime

In April, content creator Kevin Droniak went viral for taking a day trip from New York to Cairo—ten hours each way—with followers in the comments calling it “impressive”, “unhinged” and “diabolical”. Naturally, dyed-in-the-wool travellers are aghast at this touch-and-go method of holidaying. “I think it beats the whole purpose of travelling somewhere,” says Shivya Nath, an award-winning travel writer and author of The Shooting Star. “This sounds like a very tick-mark kind of travel. Almost like the peer pressure or internal pressure of ticking as many places off your list as possible.”

Dr Nabila Ismail, founder of South Asian travel club Dose of Travel, believes that when it comes to travel, something is better than nothing. “I think it’s pretty amazing that people are travelling in a way that fits their schedule, rather than not travelling at all. A surface-level snapshot of a place is better than no snapshot of a place.”

On her way to Portugal, Ismail made a 24-hour pit stop in Milan for the sole purpose of eating pizza and shopping. “Novel experiences are priceless because it’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day routine. Even with extreme day trips, it’s possible to learn something new, slip outside your comfort zone, learn about a different culture and shock your system,” she says.

Earlier this year, Racheal Kaur, an Indian-origin assistant manager in finance operations at AirAsia, revealed that her commute to work involes taking a flight from Penang to Kuala Lumpur five days a week, racking up a grand total of 700km each day. The mother of two wakes up at 4am to catch the 6.30am flight to Kuala Lumpur, returning by 8pm to spend time with her children before turning in for the night. Kaur claims that not only has this arrangement allowed her to strike a better work-life balance by allowing her to see her kids more often, but it has also reduced her overall expenses by knocking off the rent she would have to pay to keep her Kuala Lumpur accommodation.

Still, just like our eyes are first drawn to the most visually appealing item in a store, we must inevitably—even if reluctantly—turn our gaze to the price tag of these extreme day trips. While these adrenaline-fuelled experiences are no doubt soul-enriching—and in Kaur’s case, life-affirming—the cost of booking flight tickets solely to spend a single day across the ocean can make us, well, less rich in the monetary sense. Proponents of ‘travel math’ may argue that the money saved on accommodation balances out these expenses, but there are no reassuring arguments to take care of the climate cost: short-haul flights are more carbon-intensive than long-haul flights due to the significant fuel consumption during takeoff and landing.