We embark on journeys, initially, with the hope of shedding our everyday selves, only to discover that travel ultimately leads us back to a more profound understanding of who we are. Travel We believe, is more than just seeing new landscapes; it’s about opening our minds and hearts to a world that extends far beyond the confines of our daily news cycles. It’s an exchange, where we offer our perspectives and knowledge, however limited, to diverse corners of the globe, enriching ourselves in the process. In essence, travel we undertake is a pursuit of rejuvenation, a chance to slow down the relentless pace of life, to be captivated anew, and to perhaps, fall in love with the world and ourselves all over again.
This transformative power of travel was eloquently captured long before the era of frequent flights, by George Santayana in his insightful essay, “The Philosophy of Travel.” He wrote of our innate need to “escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.” This resonates deeply with the core of travel we seek.
Santayana’s emphasis on “work” highlights a crucial aspect of travel: the profound connection between effort and reward. It’s often on the road that we truly grasp how deeply our blessings are tied to the challenges overcome. His concept of a “moral” holiday is equally compelling, reminding us that our ethical compass is as much a part of our being as our nightly routines. The link between “travel” and “travail” is rarely lost on us, and for many, including myself, a significant part of the allure of travel lies in the pursuit of hardship – both the personal challenges we seek to experience and the realities of others we need to witness. Travel we engage in, therefore, guides us towards a more balanced perspective, fostering both wisdom and compassion—allowing us to perceive the world with clarity and feel it with genuine empathy. For vision without feeling can be detached, while feeling without vision can be directionless.
One of the most liberating aspects of travel is the opportunity to detach from our ingrained beliefs and certainties, to view the world and our place in it from a fresh, unconventional angle. Even the familiar sights of home, when encountered abroad, can become sources of novelty and revelation. A Kentucky Fried Chicken in Beijing, or a revival showing of “Wild Orchids” in Paris, can offer surprising insights. In China, a meal at KFC can be a significant indulgence, while in Paris, Mickey Rourke might be perceived as a cinematic icon. These cultural contrasts underscore the subjective nature of value and perception.
why we travel
If a Mongolian restaurant strikes us as exotic in Evanston, Illinois, then logically, a McDonald’s would hold a similar exotic allure in Ulaanbaatar – or at least, feel equally removed from the expected. While the distinction between “tourist” and “traveler” is often debated, perhaps the true differentiator is whether one travels with or without preconceived notions. Those who cling to their assumptions might find themselves complaining that “nothing here is like home,” while a more open traveler might grumble that “everything here is the same as everywhere else.” However, for those who embrace the transformative power of travel, the real freedom lies in its ability to disrupt our routines, challenge our assumptions, and literally turn our world upside down. A diploma might be a passport to a conventional life, but a passport can be a diploma in cultural relativism. The fundamental lesson learned on the road is the realization of how conditional and limited our supposedly universal truths truly are. Visiting a place like North Korea can feel like stepping onto another planet, an experience likely reciprocated by the locals who may perceive us as equally alien.
Travel we undertake is also driven by a need to confront and challenge our complacency. By witnessing the moral and political urgencies, the stark life-and-death realities that are often shielded from our comfortable lives at home, we gain a more profound understanding of the world. A drive through Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where basic infrastructure is lacking and daily life unfolds amidst hardship, can drastically alter our perception of global interconnectedness and the concept of a “one world order.” Travel becomes a vital tool for humanizing places, rescuing them from abstract notions and ideological frameworks.
In this process of exploration, we ourselves are also rescued from abstraction. We begin to recognize our capacity to contribute to the places we visit, becoming conduits of exchange – human messengers carrying ideas and values across cultures. Just as I might bring Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto and return with ikebana baskets to California, or carry Tylenol and soap to Cuba and bring back salsa tapes and stories, we are constantly engaged in a meaningful exchange.
More significantly, travel we do carries values, beliefs, and information to the places we explore. In many parts of the world, travelers become walking news channels, living newspapers, offering a vital link to the outside world, bypassing censorship and isolation. In closed or impoverished societies, like Pagan, Lhasa, or Havana, we become the eyes and ears for the people we encounter, their direct connection to a broader world, and often, their closest encounter with figures like Barack Obama or Taylor Swift. Therefore, a critical aspect of travel is learning to navigate the delicate balance of sharing and receiving dreams with sensitivity.
We’ve often heard the wisdom of Proust, that the real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes. However, travel offers a more nuanced beauty: it allows us to bring fresh perspectives to the people we meet. Just as holidays can heighten our appreciation for home by seeing it through the eyes of a visitor, they also enable us to bring a renewed sense of appreciation to the places we visit. We can illuminate what they have to celebrate, just as we celebrate what they have to teach us. This is how tourism, despite its potential to disrupt cultures, can also revitalize them, inspiring new traditions and renewed attention to local crafts and arts, as seen in Bali and India. If our first gift to a place is a balanced view of our own culture, the second, and perhaps more crucial, gift is a fresh appreciation for their unique warmth and beauty, seen through the lens of global comparison.
Thus, travel we undertake is a dual journey: it exposes us to external sights, values, and issues we might otherwise overlook, and more importantly, it reveals parts of ourselves that might become dormant in routine. Venturing into truly foreign lands is also a journey into unexplored inner landscapes – moods, states of mind, and hidden pathways we seldom encounter in our daily lives.
On a personal level, travel can push us beyond our comfort zones. A teetotaler in Thailand might find themselves staying out until dawn in local bars, while someone not deeply religious might spend days in Tibetan temples, immersed in sutra chants. Iceland’s stark, lunar landscapes can draw us inwards, allowing us to connect with aspects of ourselves often obscured by the noise of daily life.
Travel we seek is a quest for both self and anonymity. In finding one, we often discover the other. Abroad, we are freed from the constraints of social roles and expectations. We become, as Hazlitt described, simply “gentlemen in the parlor,” unburdened by labels and preconceptions. This liberation allows us to connect with more essential aspects of ourselves, perhaps explaining why we often feel most alive when far from home.
Away from our familiar surroundings, we embrace spontaneity, follow impulses, and open ourselves to new experiences with the same vulnerability and excitement as falling in love. We live in the present moment, shedding the weight of past and future, becoming open to interpretation, even mysterious – both to others and to ourselves. As Oliver Cromwell wisely noted, “A man never goes so far as when he doesn’t know where he is going.”
While this freedom carries inherent risks, its promise is profound: travel allows us to be reborn, to momentarily return to a younger, more receptive version of ourselves. It offers a way to bend time, to stretch a day into what feels like a year, and to surround ourselves with the unfamiliar, much like childhood. Language plays a crucial role in this opening up. Speaking a foreign language, even poorly, often evokes a more childlike, simpler version of ourselves, focused on basic communication rather than complex self-expression.
Therefore, for many, travel we embark on is not just a search for the unknown, but for the unknowing—a pursuit of an innocent perspective that can reconnect us with a more innocent self. We tend to be more open to believing abroad, more easily excited, and even kinder. Without the constraints of our usual identity, we have the opportunity to reshape ourselves, for better or worse. Travel, in this sense, can become a form of “monasticism on the move,” simplifying our lives, reducing our possessions to what we can carry, and surrendering to chance encounters.
This echoes Camus’ idea that “what gives value to travel is fear” – the disruption, the emancipation from routine and the habits that define us. This is why many travel not in search of answers, but for better questions. The most rewarding travel experiences are often those that challenge our assumptions and force us to re-evaluate our perspectives. In places like Paraguay, where the lines between legality and illegality are blurred, or Thailand, where cultural values challenge our Western judgments, we are confronted with the limitations of our own worldview. Christopher Isherwood likened the ideal travel book to a crime story, “in which you’re in search of something.” And the most compelling “something” is often that which remains elusive.
Reflecting on my early travels, I recall returning home, unable to sleep, replaying memories, poring over photographs and diaries, seeking to decipher some hidden meaning. This intense introspection, this lingering fascination, is akin to being in love.
For if every true love affair can feel like a journey into the unknown, where language feels foreign and the destination uncertain, every journey to a foreign land can be a love affair, leaving us to ponder who we are and what we’ve fallen in love with. The great travel narratives, from the Odyssey to the Divine Comedy, are, in essence, love stories. And all meaningful journeys, like love, involve being carried beyond ourselves, into a realm of both wonder and apprehension.
This metaphor also highlights the reciprocal nature of travel. We are not merely observers; we are also observed. We are consumed by the cultures we consume, and we, in turn, become objects of scrutiny and interpretation. We are the curious figures in local anecdotes, the subjects of jokes, the living postcards that travelers bring home in their stories. Travel is a meeting of realities, but also a dance of illusions. We seek our idealized vision of a place, and in return, offer a glimpse of our own dreamed-of world. Even those who seek escape from their own culture abroad become, often unwittingly, symbols of that culture.
This dynamic raises a profound question: how do we respond to the dreams and expectations projected onto us by those we encounter? Do we reinforce idealized notions, even if they diverge from reality? Or do we risk disillusionment by challenging those cherished beliefs? To nurture their dreams might be to perpetuate an illusion, but to shatter them might be to deprive them of a vital source of hope.
This complex interaction, akin to the delicate balance of truth and tact in personal relationships, may explain why many great travel writers are, by nature, enthusiasts. From Pierre Loti, known for his romanticized encounters, to Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, and Graham Greene, these writers, despite acknowledging imperfections, chose to seek out and celebrate the admirable aspects of the places they explored.
They embraced the idea of “being moved” as a central purpose of travel, recognizing that profound moments of “ecstasy” – stepping outside oneself – often arise from movement and exploration. Epiphany can be both a catalyst and a consequence of travel. The travel writer Norman Lewis famously stated, “To write well about a thing, I’ve got to like it!”
However, travel is constantly evolving, shaped by global changes and the evolving role of the travel writer. Simply reaching remote corners of the earth is no longer sufficient, especially as those corners become increasingly accessible. While writers like Jan Morris once captivated readers by chronicling journeys to global cities, today, such journeys are within reach for many. Instead of documenting the remnants of empires, contemporary travel writing is better positioned to chart the emergence of a new, globalized, and mobile world, one that, like empires of the past, disseminates its values and cultural artifacts worldwide.
In the 19th century, empires spread ideas through religious texts and cultural exports. Today, a globalized culture disseminates icons of popular culture. The reception of these global symbols within different cultural contexts reveals as much about those cultures as their own traditions. A global fast-food chain in one culture takes on a different meaning in another. This interplay of global and local creates a new layer of exoticism, arising from how cultures adapt and reinterpret external influences.
Furthermore, the increasing diversity of populations worldwide adds another layer of complexity and richness to travel. Many individuals embody a blend of cultures, becoming “transnational” citizens, adaptable to diverse environments, and forging a personal sense of home that transcends geographical boundaries. Even for those who remain geographically rooted, the world is increasingly mobile, with diverse cultures converging within local communities. Technology amplifies this sense of global interconnectedness, offering virtual forms of travel, though questions arise about the authenticity and impact of these synthetic experiences.
Ultimately, the most significant journeys are often internal. We travel through stories, through new relationships, through moments of disruption. Novels can be voyages, and travel books can be works of fiction. The line between reality and imagination blurs. Travel becomes a journey into the subjective realm of imagination, a synthesis of personal perception and external reality. What we bring back from our travels is an inseparable blend of the place itself and our own inner world.
Great thinkers remind us that reality is, in part, our own creation. We invent the places we see as much as we invent the stories we tell. What we discover externally must resonate with something already within us. We carry within us the potential for wonder and discovery, just as we carry our own sense of home and destination. The most profound explorations are often the internal ones, the thresholds crossed within our own hearts and minds.
Even as the world feels increasingly explored, the potential for personal discovery through travel remains boundless. Some of the most compelling travel narratives interweave physical journeys with internal quests, seeking deeper meaning and understanding. The most distant horizons are often found within ourselves.
Travel we undertake, at its core, is a powerful catalyst for keeping our minds agile and receptive. As Santayana wisely observed, “There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar; it keeps the mind nimble; it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.” The spirit of travel aligns with the open-mindedness championed by poets and the wakefulness sought by spiritual traditions. If travel is akin to love, it is because both are heightened states of awareness, fostering mindfulness, receptivity, and a readiness for transformation. The best journeys, like the most profound love affairs, leave an enduring mark, shaping who we are long after they have ended.
