Above the Skyline: Where Exactly Are We Supposed to Go Now?
I used to think choosing a vacation was a matter of weather, airfare and whether I preferred mountains or water. Now it feels more like scanning a geopolitical risk map before deciding whether to pack sunscreen or canned food.
There’s a war in the Middle East that keeps redrawing flight paths on live air-traffic maps. European capitals have periodic strikes that seem to target precisely the week you’ve booked your ticket. Canada, which once felt like an extension of your backyard with better maple syrup, occasionally flares up in anti-American sentiment depending on the news cycle. Mexico and parts of Central America appear in headlines about cartels with unsettling regularity.
I don’t remember vacations feeling like strategic exercises in risk mitigation.
Air travel, of course, continues. Airports hum, hate the lines, the useless gold status I have. Flights depart. Families take selfies at departure gates as if nothing has changed. And maybe nothing has, at least not in the practical sense. Airlines reroute around conflict zones with quiet professionalism. Security briefings become a little more detailed. Insurance policies get a second look.
But the tone has shifted. When I look at a map now, I don’t see destinations. I see advisories.
Hawaii begins to look less like paradise and more like a safe bet. I don’t imagine anyone is planning to attack it again; Japan is an ally, at least for now. Colorado feels sturdy, landlocked, mountainous, reassuringly domestic. They even have those famous hardened bunkers tucked into the mountains, the kind you read about and briefly imagine sprinting toward in an emergency. Though I suspect access might be limited to people whose net worth requires commas in strategic places.
There’s a certain appeal in a destination where the biggest threat is altitude sickness or a sudden snowstorm. Even staying home has its own strange allure. No passport required. No exchange rate fluctuations. No surprises.
Still, hiding in the house doesn’t feel quite right either. I start wondering where exactly one is supposed to hide. The closet? The attic? The garden shed? There’s always that unsettling movie character who withdraws from the world and somehow ends up living in a crawl space across the street, quietly observing life as if it were safer from a distance.
It’s a strange instinct, the idea that retreat equals security. As if proximity to your own roof automatically makes everything manageable. But even at home, the news still arrives. The phone still buzzes. The world doesn’t stop at the front door.
My choice is to travel and explore, not hide in a closet. Travel has always involved a quiet calculation of risk. We just did not describe it that way. We called it adventure, curiosity, or simply getting away. The world has never been simple. It is just more visible now. News arrives instantly, amplified and dissected in real time. We absorb global instability in the same breath that we check flight deals and scroll through hotel reviews.
What’s changed isn’t necessarily the danger. It’s the awareness.
I suspect most people will keep traveling. Not recklessly, not blindly, just selectively. They’ll choose Hawaii over a war zone, Colorado over a currency swing, a direct flight over a complicated connection. They’ll read advisories and then book anyway, perhaps with refundable fares this time.
Maybe that’s what a vacation has become: not an escape from the world, but a carefully measured step into it.
And maybe the question isn’t whether there’s anywhere safe to go.
It’s whether staying home actually feels any safer at all.
Above the Skyline by Aram Gesar
Observations on how we travel now—and why it feels the way it does.
Above the Skyline is a reimagining of the Skyline Editorial previously published in AirGuide Destinations (formerly Frequent Flyer Destinations) magazine. It offers a measured look at how modern travel actually feels. Aram Gesar observes the small frictions, unspoken rules, and design choices that shape journeys in the air and on the ground—often unnoticed, occasionally absurd, and always familiar.