There is something to be said for optimizing your career rather than traveling when you are young. I chose to delay my career and education to travel and while it taught me to enjoy my own company and has given me great insight into a lot of things I still hesitate to recommend it to people.

Fact is that life is a 'choose your own adventure' kind of game and most people grow into that understanding slowly as they dive deep into their cultural norms. Traveling young exposes you to this idea when you are a bit too idealistic to make good use of it.

For example, having a shared context / assumptions is a prerequisite for successfully raising a child (nevermind that you brainwash it into your assumptions, at least you are in approximate agreement with you spouse and have relative confidence in your opinions).

What ends up happening to many travelers is that they return to find that their original culture isn't special but rather represents some arbitrary set of choices in the spectrum of possible cultures. Probably there will be a realization that some of these choices are less than optimal.

The idealist sets out to 'convince people' or believes they've now got the right idea about things, even if you are relatively pragmatic and just pick up some slight quirks it's still often enough to isolate you from the most boring part of society. The part that hands out 'normal jobs' and supports the dominant political party.

From there things go downhill because people start to associate 'quirky' or 'weird' with you and you silently become a cautionary tale of the dangers of traveling ("it will undo your conditioning", "you will become isolated from the herd and exposed to danger"), however on the surface the reasoning will always be: "it's so dangerous, there are all of these things that could go wrong.." or "I am this kind of person and elsewhere I will face prejudice" a.k.a. "here I have special status that I am unwilling to let go of".

This kind of situation eventually turns people off traveling and they recondition themselves to fit into some group (maybe expats maybe back home) vacation is spent on "holiday" not traveling but maybe they manage to leverage some small idea they gained on their travels and make a profit, others don't give up on traveling but do so at the cost of everything else until all they have left is bragging in some hostel, finally there are the grown up idealists that have sorted out their beliefs over multiple years of battling with the status quo, they live a somewhat reclusive lifestyle and if they know what they stand for and act with some conviction they sometimes manage to earn the respect of others and move the culture forward a cycle of computation but most will be ignored quietly so long as they don't upset anyone.

Meanwhile the people who optimized school and career are reaching the brink of breakdown from never giving themselves the time off to figure out what they are doing. However they have plenty of money to take that time off and their main struggle will be existential crisis, physical ailments, being a workaholic or some other stress related injury.

My belief is that the right path is more balanced, when I was traveling all over the place I was going too fast and I had no aim or reason, I was just there. Slowly I realized that everyone around me traveled for a purpose, they wanted to go skiing or to see something they attached importance to or meet someone they were good friends with etc.

The balance I was missing was the comfort of having a reason or support and the balance others often miss is the courage to face the unknown. The right idea is to travel in the place you are (stepping out of the comfort zone) and to live in the place you travel to, that is, always be constructing your home. Even if you only stay for a couple of nights, no matter how short the stay it is never an excuse to "put up with your environment" - of course you need to be realistic about what you can accomplish but never shut off this part of your mind that is making a home.