Travel -- Why bother?

March 30, 2007

Why do we leave the familiar and comfortable and journey to places far and strange? In these final days of this global adventure of mine a little synthesis is due. I offer for your consideration Walkabout’s Theory of Travel (which I will abbreviate as “TOT” for no particular reason, since I won’t use the abbreviation ever again).

First off, travel isn’t the same as going places. Lots of people fly long distances just to see cool stuff that happens to be far away. They are just sight seeing. If Machu Pichu or the Pyramids were in West Hartford they would be happy to see them there. They aren’t interested in experiencing Peru or Egypt, modern or ancient. They just want to see a lot of impressive stones that made it to somebody’s list of Wonders of the World.

I don’t disdain that sort of voyaging. There is no law that says you need to play amateur archeologist or anthropologist. Sometimes you just want to look at something bigger than yourself and say “wow!” And I’ve purposefully ticked off a considerable number of the “1000 Things to See Before you Die” on this little outing of mine, just to whittle down the list. I haven’t done the final tally, but I suspect at this point that if I maintain a rate of one per month I’ve got a fighting shot, assuming standard actuarial tables and what not.

Or sometimes people go places far away just to warm up in the winter or cool down in the summer. That’s not travel as I mean it, just climate control by airplane. Once they are on the beach and have learned the local phrase for “bring me another pina colada” they could care less what hemisphere they are in.

Real travel in the Walkaboutian sense of the term means going to unfamiliar places, where people, language, culture or environment are different and perhaps challenging, in order to experience those differences. Those elements are not obstacles on your way to the pile of stones or the beach, they are the reason you are there. And, rather than insulating yourself from the experience through fancy hotels, familiar food and escorted tours, you immerse yourself in it.

Opening ourselves up to the travel experience entails discomfort, confusion and effort. But the payoff is immense. We go through our day to day lives seeing just a small fraction of what is around us. We are so accustomed to things that we no longer pay attention, since everything is where and how we expect it to be. Our houses, cars, streets and cities, restaurants, shops, neighbors, language and customs are all so familiar that we no longer see them. But in a foreign land we are required to open our senses since things are different in ways great and small. As a small thing, I wrote in a previous blog about foreign power outlets, which use weird shapes and voltages – when was the last time you gave any thought to electrical fixtures? As a stranger in a strange land you find yourself in a surprising and interesting world. It is a throwback to when you were a child and things as mundane as power outlets were new and curious. You went through life with your eyes wide open, taking it all in with a sense of wonder. In a word, that is what travel is about – wonder. In our day to day lives we can go months at a time without really experiencing it. When you travel properly, you are experiencing about as much of it as you can absorb.

This sort of wonder doesn’t require a “Wonder of the World”, or something listed in the “1000 Places to See Before You Die” book. In Phnom Phen I saw someone transporting perhaps 50 live ducks on the back of a motorbike, dangling squawking by the feet. Throughout Indochina I wondered at what people managed to carry on motorbike or bicycle. Baskets of piglets were no problem, but you cannot carry a full grown pig on a motorcycle – you need two, for balance. The record for human motorcycle passengers I am told is six, though I personally never saw more than four.

There are satisfactions that come from this sort of travel, when you are open and receptive to new thoughts and experiences. You have the satisfied feeling of knowing that a tiny bit more of the infinite strangeness and variety of this world is now captured within you. You feel you are living a little more intensely and fully than you typically do when at home.

The flip side is that it is draining, and there is a limit to how long one can do it productively. At a certain point you start becoming numb to the experience. And after three months of travel I expect I have reached that point. Initially I made an effort to learn as much of the language, history and customs of each country I was visiting. But of late I have to work on waking up to remember which country I’m in, and if I can recall how to say hello in the local lingo I consider it sufficient. In paying for a purchase I sometimes open my wallet and point to the dollars, bhat and dong therein and ask which of this stuff they take. The three month duration of this trip was something of a compromise. I thought nine months would be a good trip and Kathy suggested 90 days, so we settled on three months. As usual, Kathy was right and it’s time to come home.

The trick, of course, is to use the practice you get in traveling at keeping your eyes open, and the exercise that you have given your sense of wonder, when you are back home. I intend to put this all to great use to enrich all aspects of my day to day life back in Connecticut. To live each moment fully, awake and wondering, as an adventurer in my own land. But first, I have a lot of television shows to catch up on.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave