I have a problem with travel as it is usually practised, and the problem is this: we treat it like a highlight reel. We arrive, we photograph, we buy a souvenir, we tick a box, we leave. We return home with the proof but not the place. We could have achieved a similar result by going to the library. Or just watching some YouTube videos.

The slow travel manifesto is not complicated. It asks one thing: stay long enough to get lost. Not figuratively … literally. Take a wrong turn. Take a bus that ends up finishing its day at the depot. End up somewhere that isn’t in the guidebook. Eat at a place with no English menu because it’s where all the locals eat … and wonder why the “crispy pork” has tiny finger-like projections on its edges … and what makes the base of this soup so red? Have an awkward exchange with an armed military man on a street corner who asks to see your passport, then want’s to know why you have three.

Tourism is the act of consuming a place. All take, little give.

Slow travel is the act of living in a place, and being changed by the experience.

I never spend less than a week in any one spot. If possible I try to book a month — at the moment I’m in Cambodia with a 12 month visa. Never have I experienced a whole year of seasons in any one place other than the US, Australia, and Kiribati, which doesn’t have seasons.

Slow travel is not always about budget or retirement or having time to spare, though that can be part of it. It is a decision about paying attention. It is choosing depth over breadth. It’s finding out how people actually manage to achieve life in this unfamiliar environment. It is the opposite of a bucket list, which is travel in the mode of acquisition. Slow travel is travel in the mode of relationship building.

The highlight reel will always be there. It’s an ordinary Tuesday in a foreign city — the market, the bus, the queue at the bank, the moment when you realise you haven’t thought about “home” all day.

What is “home”, anyway, and where the heck am I?