You can still get lost today if you want to.
When I go to a new city, I find a landmark than take the train/bus/subway towards it but not to it. I get off ~ 3-5 miles away from it, then I try to find on my own navigating the streets in the general direction of it. Yes, it takes a an hour or two to get there, but I get to see things at random which otherwise I would miss.
I have seen people with phones in their hands asking for directions and not knowing how to tell Google Maps where they want to go.
It’s interesting to think of the way experiences go away, in this context. You can get lost if you want nowadays, but it is pretty rare to get lost if you don’t want to.
Now you get lost because you intentionally didn’t check the map or because you intentionally didn’t ask for directions, and you have the fallback GPS. In the past, a well-planned trip included landmarks or other opportunities to recover from getting lost, and might not have gotten too far from the familiar. And you got lost in a world where most gas stations had maps and asking for/giving directions was totally common.
IDK. Getting lost in the past was 99% annoying anyway so I’m not going to write anything nostalgic about the lost magic of it, or whatever. It’s funny to think that it can’t really be replicated, though.
Or even less structured, just taking the first random bus you come across and see where you end up.