After getting responses both as blog comments and via other means related to the strains of our return flight despite all of our planning, I reflected.
I reflected on all the detail and tradeoffs I'd discussed previously related to travel planning. Was I making light of the issues one would encounter. Then I did deeper reflection. I went into what does it meant to 'travel' and to be 'a traveler'. And here is what I have concluded.
There is a deep seeded need in some people to travel. Whether you were Herodotus in ancient Greece, Ibn Battuta in medieval Islam, or Henry Swinburne in 18th century Europe, there has been a desire to go out and see, experience, learn.
Travel by its very nature of taking one out of a settled, predictable life pattern, will put one into situations where is uncomfortable. Travel (as I have written earlier) is not 'taking a vacation'. It is not going to a place where one can relax and let their worries go. It is about seeking new experiences, or delving deeper into places one has already seen.
If one wants to 'look like one is traveling' but have all the uncertainty taken out, you have your cruise or tour. You will definitely see things. But they will be the curated things that cruise or tour organizer has arranged for you. They will be homogenized, safe, and require little effort or discomfort on your part. To me, personally, this is not travel.
When you travel, you know you are going to have your good days and your bad days. Not everything you plan will pan out. You may run into a temple celebration you totally knew nothing about. Even your negatives may have a positive such as my getting stuck in the mud and all the Spaniards working to get me out! And you will have a voyage where things don't go quite as planned and you get tired and sick.
I realize all this is subjective and there are many levels and nuances. One might say if you are not trekking, traveling with minimal creature comforts you are not really traveling. They would look at what Wife and I do with skepticism and I accept that.
But I do accept that the possibility of things not going smoothly is a part of the true travel experience just as travelers have done for centuries and centuries.
4 comments:
your comment that people you speak with don't understand why you'd want some adventure on your travels and that you have to remind them doesn't surprise me. I think you can take a cavelier attitude of education with them. Most people don't have the money or time to travel in volume, and their frame of reference for going somewhere else is definitely in the camp that they want to avoid getting back from a journey feeling like they need a holiday afterwards because it was so demanding.
if you were an aristocrat in the 18th century, it'd be the norm as you embarked on your Grand Tour of Europe or whatever they did. :)
I think I travel/vacation/leave my home (whatever the most apt term is) for different reasons than you, so it's interesting to hear your philosophy laid out.
Alexis, RGM, your points are well taken and actually support the thesis I've made. People move around and go from place to place for lots of reasons. We can apply the verb 'to travel' to what they are doing.
But the process they are undertaking is going somewhere for some other reason. This is what you do RGM. It's what most people do. And have done.
But, as I noted via the historical figures I listed, and Alexis you brought up, mentioning the Grand Tour, there have always been individuals for whom the travel itself is the objective. Yes, you will see things, meet people, learn things, have challenges, etc. But those are all included within the context of 'Traveling'...the 'Traveling' being the objective, more than the 'go see this person, this place, do this thing.'
And it is definitely true that travel in this sense has more often been a province of those with the time and money to do it. Though there is a subset of travelers who have little, but also need little and travel light and with more freedom.
I think for most people now and in the past, the 'Travel' which I speak of has always seemed more an ordeal than a pleasure.
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