I was travelling in Lombok a couple years ago, it's an island 70 km across, next to Bali in Indonesia, and stayed with a family. The woman of the house had never been off the island, and had only travelled to the capital city of Mataram (about a 45 minute drive from her village) on a handful of occasions. It's not uncommon for people in poorer parts of the world, even today.
My grand-mother lives in a mountainous valley in the Carpathians Mountains, she's now in her mid-80s. She has only ventured 50+ miles outside of her village I think only 2 or 3 times in her life. On the other hand, she used to have two brothers-in-law (who had grew in the same village as her) one of whom had studied at the Leningrad Polytechnic (I think that's ~2,500 km away) and the other one who had lived and worked as a secret agent in East Berlin in the mid-'50s. The world is a complicated place, always has been.
I grew up in New York City. When my Dad retired we moved to a fairly rural area in Pennsylvania, about 90 miles west of NYC.
Our next door neighbor there, age mid 30's, had never once been to NYC, and he never saw any reason to go. This was a cultural shock for me, because who didn't want to at least visit NYC???
Some people are just less adventurous than others.
