Why do I travel to faraway places…
I have been asked this many times. It is a fairly straightforward question, the answer is anything but. And I’m sure, if you’d ask hundred people, you would get hundred different answers. In its essence, travel* is simply a way to discover multitudes of human experiences. I think, the only true way to achieve it is by traveling ‘mostly’ alone, or in a small group of like-minded fellow ‘wanderers’. It is about the only way of how to interact with locals, and see, feel, and hopefully understand better their lives, may they be happy and wonderful, or tragic and full of sorrow… This often means leaving behind the comforts that I am used to at home as it is about meeting unexpected challenges almost daily, i.e. overcoming language barriers, finding out and respecting local customs and cultural differences, or being a little bit adventurous when tasting wide variety of (sometimes highly unusual!!!) dishes, and much more… To experience it all fully, I have to let go off my ‘Western way’ of doing things. Sometimes, just a slight change in my behavior (as in “When in Rome, do as Romans do.“) will bring on many memorable, even funny, encounters with local people.I always like to quote words of Henry David Thoreau when answering the question of ‘Why do I travel?’ He said it best in Walden. His experiences of ‘going to the woods’ parallel closely mine of ‘being on the road (or, if you will, traveling)’:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
* There is a important difference between a ‘traveler‘ and a ‘tourist‘. Tourists are keen to go to places where they can ’sight-see’ the world not far away from luxuries known to them from home. They ‘vacation’ in places that are safe and predictable. They never really venture into the unexpected and surprising world, just beyond their perfectly organized resorts and tightly scheduled itineraries. In that sense, they avoid encounters with true reality. They prefer to stay outside it, in a world of glitzy travel brochure images. Most likely, they just want to escape banalities of daily life (for a moment), relax and then go back home with a few gifts and pleasant memories. Such experiences would be shallow and suffocating for a true traveler. Not to be able to immerse yourself into the world outside this ‘tourist reality’ would be simply unbearable for him. He wants to appreciate the world with all his senses, awake emotions, or even discover his true self… And often, such intense travel changes him forever… BTW, I’ve been on both sides of the fence. I have traveled as a ‘tourist’ too, mostly at home, in the U.S. I tried to make the best out of it. But when abroad, in a culturally different environment, I prefer the traveler’s way…
