Beyond The Grid

Beyond the Grid Episode 10: The Real Way to Plan a Trip

May 26, 2026

6 mins Read

By Supriya Sahu

Beyond the Grid is where real conversations happen. Two creators. Two hosts. No script that survives contact with the truth. BTG is a live, unscripted space where travel creators from across the world talk openly about how they actually plan trips, what AI gets right, what it completely misses, and why the best travel decisions still come from people who've actually been there.

Beyond the Grid (BTG) exists for the questions nobody asks out loud. This is where we stop performing the highlight reel and sit down for honest conversations about AI itineraries, solo travel realities, and what it means to plan a trip that actually fits your life.

Where: YouTube , Alike @travelwithalike

Why BTG conversations hit differently

Most travel content answers the question: where should I go?

BTG asks the harder one: how should I actually get there?

In Episode 10, we are talking about:

Whether AI trip planning is genuinely useful or just fast
The moment AI gave someone a plan that made no sense for who they actually are
What solo female travel looks like when you hand the itinerary to an algorithm
How travel creators balance AI efficiency with the instinct you only build by going
Why your grandmother's restaurant tip still beats ChatGPT
When AI removes friction and when it removes the point

Episode 10: Two creators, two different relationships with AI

Planning a trip used to take days. Multiple tabs. Conflicting blogs. That one friend who has definitely been there and is definitely wrong about the timings.

Now you type one line and an AI builds your entire trip in seconds. Where to go. What to eat. What to skip. It is faster. It is smarter. And it raises a question nobody in travel is answering honestly: when should you hand the wheel to AI, and when should you never?

That is the conversation for Episode 10.

We are bringing together two creators who have both used AI on the road and have very different things to say about it. One has structure, systems, and a filming workflow that moves across countries. The other started travelling solo long before AI tools were mainstream and now asks whether they would have made her first trip easier , or just smaller.

This conversation explores:

The difference between AI knowing where and you knowing why
Real prompts, real reactions, and a live test of
What travel content creation looks like when you are planning a shoot in Ireland and trusting a machine with your schedule
Solo travel safety? Does AI make it more accessible or does it create a false sense of control?

Meet the creators joining us

Deanna Troy: @deanna_troy_travels

Deanna Troy is a budget and vegan travel creator who builds her content around doing destinations properly. From Southeast Asia to the USA to Europe, her channel is rooted in a specific promise to her audience: real travel, real costs, real plant-based options

She is currently deep into Ireland, documenting it with the same methodical approach she brings to every destination, researching, filming, and producing content that respects her viewers' time and money. Her Instagram reflects this live project in real time.

Her perspective on AI comes from someone who accounts for every hour of a travel day. When AI tells you the café opens at nine and you are outside at eight-fifty with a camera crew, that is not a minor error , it is a wasted shoot and a broken workflow. Deanna is not anti-AI. She is precise about where it earns its place in a creator's process.

In this episode, she takes a live AI-generated itinerary for Ireland and tells us exactly what she would change, what she would keep, and what no algorithm would ever figure out.

Prapti Gogoi: @prapti_gogoi

Prapti's first solo international trip was to Indonesia and Singapore. She figured it out without AI, without a community of solo female travellers to call on, and without the apps that make it look easy today. That experience shaped everything about how she travels now.

She has since made it her mission to show more women, particularly from India, that solo travel is possible, safe, and genuinely worth it. She works with the kind of travellers AI trip planners are not actually built for, people whose concerns are not just about distance and budget, but about safety at night, local etiquette, and which neighbourhoods a woman should and should not be in alone.

Her question for this episode is a direct one: Does AI make solo female travel more accessible, or does it hand women a confidence they have not earned yet?

Your hosts for this episode

Sneha Chamaria

Sneha moved out at 16 and has since lived in 15 Indian cities and 10 countries. She knows what it means to belong everywhere and nowhere at once. She has overplanned trips, underplanned trips, and landed somewhere in between , using AI for the parts that waste time so she can actually spend energy on the parts that matter. She brings warmth, instinct, and the kind of questions that come from someone who has made every mistake in real time.

Aakash Khanwani

Aakash has covered India from one end to the other and taken himself to Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco. He is the first to admit that his curiosity is not about collecting cities , it is about the people who stayed. He wants to know what could have been different if he had chosen differently, and he brings that same honesty to every conversation. In this episode, he is also the one running the live AI test, which means if it goes sideways, you will see it happen.

Join us for Episode 10

Every BTG episode starts with a question and ends somewhere nobody expected.

This one starts with: if AI planned your perfect trip, would you actually enjoy it?

Deanna has structure and a filming schedule. Prapti has instinct and a case for why the unplanned moments are the whole point. Neither of them is wrong. That tension is exactly what makes this worth watching.

If you have ever typed a destination into ChatGPT and trusted the result, this conversation is for you. If you have ever ignored an AI suggestion on the ground and been right about it, it is especially for you.

Want to plan a trip before the episode? Try Eia, Alike's AI trip planner and bring your own questions to the conversation.