This comment in another thread got me thinking about generally what kind of routes people are picking out, and what are their motivations for doing so

After our recent trip to Aragón (where we did a couple of days of sandy and gravel roads in our car) my partner's interest in riding off road has shot up a great deal, from just wanting to tag along to wanting to plan trips or even go off on her own, and including a desire to explore more varied terrain ... the main factora for her are to be as far away from other humans as possible, experience places where human influence is at it's lowest, and to cut through the landscape with less restrictions on where you can and can't go.

To a certain extent I share all that, but I also enjoy the challenge of riding difficult terrain, which is why I enjoy trials riding ... and the idea of being on a paved road for days at a time doesn't appeal.

So, what weighting do you give on trips towards choosing ways to cover ground, or to finding places other people don't generally go? On many of the RTW vlogs I've seen people map out towns or villages as target destinations, I don't remember many cases of people looking at a map, saying "that looks interesting / weird, I'll just go over there for a couple of days and explore it" ... do many people do that and just not document it as much?