Travel: Why Do You Do It?

I was born with wanderlust. As much as I love my home in Pune, India, I love to travel, and would spend the rest of my life travelling if I could afford it. Unfortunately, I cannot. Luckily for me, however, I am not alone in my love of travel, and am married to someone who loves to travel as much as I do.

Many people ask my wife and I about how we manage our marriage, considering the fact that we have spent most of it living on different continents. I agree that this is not an ideal state of affairs and we will, in the near future, have an opportunity to spend more time together.

Part of the reason we have spent so much time apart has been due to our love of travel, or rather, our love of seeing and living in new places. The actual “travelling” bit can be pretty dreadful. I absolutely hate airports and the whole process of getting from one place to another by air. If I had the time and money, I would travel the world by train, since I enjoy train travel. When I lived in the US many years ago, I saw a lot of the country from the passenger seat of a car, which was also enjoyable.

My definition of travelling and seeing new places is a little different from some other people. I like to see new places, but only at my own pace. Actually, I like to live in new places as opposed to seeing them. I like to try and understand the local culture and politics, find a favourite bar and/or restaurant and learn more about the local food. I like to meet and chat with locals, and hopefully make a few friends. This means that I need to spend a considerable amount of time in a place, until it starts to feel like a surrogate home.

For many people, travelling means continuous frantic movement from one place to another, as their camera-shutters keep clicking incessantly, showing them standing in front of famous monuments or historical buildings. People who love seeing six new places in seven days are tourists, not travellers. Tourists usually know nothing about the places they visit, and are more interested in immediate photo-opportunities and quickly moving on to the next destination recommended by their tour guide. More often than not, they aren’t interested in really getting to know the places they visit. As a result, they usually leave a place with as little knowledge of it as when they first arrived there. Tourists usually have everything organized and accounted for in advance. Travellers, by contrast, often make spontaneous decisions and prefer to go off the beaten track, in search of a unique or different experience. I have nothing against tourists, but I cannot be one. I prefer to be a traveller instead.

While the world is a large place and I doubt I will be able to see much of it, I consider myself lucky to have seen as much of it as I have. I have travelled the high cold plains of the American West, driven through Yellowstone National Park on the first day of the season, eaten “recession-special” pizzas in the Bronx in New York and lived off Coal Harbour in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. I have visited the Taj Mahal on a moon-lit night, trekked at 11,000 feet in the incomparably beautiful Indian Himalayas and watched the sunrise on the 25,600 foot high Nanda Devi. I have seen the beautiful temple carvings at Khajuraho and crossed the Ganges River in a decrepit steamboat.

Along the way, I have made several great friends who have enriched my life. Thanks to the Internet, I have rediscovered some of them after many years. There is still so much more to see and do, and if life is kind, I will continue to travel. This probably means I will sacrifice career opportunities and financial stability to satisfy my wanderlust. So be it. I may not die rich, but whenever my time comes, I can at least say I was well-travelled.