BonkTheAnnoyed

I haven't tried it myself, but yeah woes in the street is that it works if you enable enough permissions on play services and whatnot.

Iron Key

Exactly! But it’s easy to flash to something that boots and looks plausible, then sync back all your stuff when you get to your destination

No Google required! :-) Though you can enable / install a sandboxed Google play services and mirrored app store, and starve them of permissions except for what/when you absolutely require. GrapheneOS lets you add "profiles" -- essentially separate user accounts, and switch between them. Many folks put any Google stuff on a separate profile and otherwise stay on the surveillance free side. You'll want to install Obtainium and probably f-froid, to find all the open source apps you're after.

Used pixel + GrapheneOS. Takes some getting used to, but most stuff works as expected. The default apps aren't pretty, but ithe Fossify alternatives are a little nicer. You're leaving a whole ecosystem meant to work seamlessly without having to understand how it works, so be prepared for that...

I sync important things to an encrypted drive, so I can flash and restore with little lost but convenience and a couple of hours of downtime.