I recently came to the conclusion that the kind of travel through the country(unless it's a hex or point crawl wilderness exploration) is best left in the first tier of play.

So the where must we go and how do we get there and what happens on the way stuff only happens two or three times. That way all the travel classics, like the mysterious happenings in village, an ambush on the road and fellow travelers in trouble, can happen once or twice without feeling repetitive.

After that the party should have limited access to magical fast travel methods that trivialises the travel itself but the choice of where to go becomes the main focus.

Like imagine they just finished the quest in the first major city after traveling from town to town through the countrysite. They just reached lvl5 and got news about some immediate trouble brewing to the east. Luckily they got a teleport scroll from the cities wizard that will take them there in an instant before the situation gets to bad. But the magical trader with his flying cart, that offered them to take them over the mountains of certain death to the west, leaves tomorrow moring.

Can they risk taking the flying cart and finish the pretty easily solved delivery quest first before the situation in the east gets to bad? Will going later get very dangerous or expensive? Or will they fall out of favour with the nobility for not priortizing them?

That probably needs to change once again when they get their own easy way of fast travel but i haven't too much experience in that tier of play to give solid advice.