We often romanticize pilgrimage as the path to the secret true Orthodoxy. We think that we must find the mythical “old country elders” and climb up a mountain to find the hidden answers. Or we pursue an advanced theology degree, thinking it will uncover some kind of forgotten knowledge. Or we rally around the internet celebrity priest who promotes himself as the renegade telling you the ancient doctrines that everyone else hid from you. But actually for most of us, everything we need for our salvation is in the local parish, either on the altar or on the bookshelf.

https://orthodoxreflections.com/five-good-reasons-not-to-visit-a-monastery-the-temptations-of-monastic-maximalism/