Shortly before I left for Asia in 2002 I gave a PowerPoint presentation of photos from my 2001 journey. During the Q&A session, one of my friends asked me why I traveled. The audience reaction was "why wouldn't you", but I thought it was a serious question that deserved a serious answer. So, on my way back to Asia I tried to produce one:
You asked why I travel. I've asked myself the same question, and I'm still asking it, although I've come up with several reasons.
I always thought "because it's there" was a lousy reason for climbing a mountain, but I confess that it's one reason I travel. I quote St. Augustine on my web site: "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." For most people, in most times, all they were allowed to read was a page, or maybe only a paragraph, for women maybe only a sentence. We are privileged.
Occasionally the book has been opened. The Romans may have been the first tourists during the pax Romana (read Tony Perrottet's "Route 66 A.D.") In the 17th and 18th centuries young British aristocrats weren't considered educated until they had made the "Grand Tour" of Europe. These days many European students travel the world between school and college. (I just left it late!) How can you think sensibly about your own country until you've seen others?
Maybe it's a lack of imagination on my part, but I don't think that books or TV are a substitute for actually being there. Nothing prepares you for the feeling of driving through a remote Pakistani village and seeing only men on the streets, in the stores (selling as well as buying), and in the coffee houses - or just a few hurrying women, unseen inside their black burkhas. Nothing can show you what it feels like to drive through the Taklamaklan desert -- six hours of absolutely nothing but sand -- and know viscerally how it ate caravans, even towns, how easy it would be die there.
Then, I think that diversity is a universal value -- so many galaxies, so many stars, so many species, so many individuals. I can see more diversity in an hour in K.L.'s Chinatown than in a year in North Carolina. And there are all those mountains, beaches, temples, markets as well as people -- so much to see.
Finally, this just feels right for me. When I'm on the road is when I feel most alive. Traveling last year, and already this year, in the most unlikely places (Amritsar train station, Newark airport) I get a sudden feeling of fitness, completeness, knowing that I am in the right place, doing the right thing. I don't yet know why, but maybe that's not important.
Of course, this applies to "on the ground" travel. I don't think a luxury round-the-world flight, or a cruise, really counts. Sure, you made it all the way round, but what did you really see?
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