Although not an artists myself, I can only agree with you. Being an artists/musician and in the spotlights on the road travelling the world, looks nice from te outside, but is hard work and probably leaves no time to experience all the places one travels to. I used to travel a lot in my Telecommunication/IT job, around the globe, same story though; People were sometimes even jealous at me for this opportunity I got, but the reality was that I hardly got any experience from any country or city, other than: taxi, hotel, restaurant, customer, taxi, plane. And I had platinum level frequent flyers, for nine years in a row, so can you imagine the amount of travel I did? :)
Airports and hotels are like a personal hell when you travel a lot haha. The experience is cool. I am sure you were able to experience all types of things people cant even dream of though.
Owww sure, even when spending time in a taxi, one can see the country as it passes by the taxi window. When sitting with the customers, one can get a hint of what the social culture is about. When one sits in a restaurant, one get a flavour of local food. And when one walks from hotel to restaurant, one can get some more street experiences. So yes, all in all I saw and experienced a lot, saw rich places, saw very very poor places, met obnoxious people, and met really really nice people. Saw a lot of sh*t, but also saw how people are able to deal with the (mostly) poor situations they are in (think of poor African countries).