Something, which did not work at all as assumed. A jetlag, which keeps awake all night. A meal, which made horribly sick. I doubt that there is any frequent traveler, who did not encounter one of those or another challenge whilst travelling. Most certainly, such challenges occur on a somewhat regular basis. Undoubtedly, travelling can be exhausting, painful and annoying. Why then do we keep travelling? What keeps us going? I thought about this question and also discussed it with friends. In this post, I want to share our motivation to travel and our essence of travelling.
My personal number one reason is plain and simple: curiosity. When observing kids, it is easy to think that curiosity is an intrinsic characteristic of any human being. Without it, mankind would not be where it is. One way or another, people seem to maintain the curiosity to a greater or lesser extent. When visiting Northern France after many weeks, which were restricted in activities due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I could not get enough from learning about the history of the local nature (e.g. “Why is Mont Saint-Michel such an iconic landmark?”) as well as the more recent, man-made history (e.g. “Why are there Gaelic signs in some areas of Brittany?”). People are interested in many different kinds of things. Some want to fully understand how a car works, others, like me, want to understand places. Obviously, the modern world offers many possibilities to learn about things – and I do use them a lot: books, documentaries, etc.; but from my experience, you only start to really understand a place once you perceive it with all of the senses.
It is curiosity, which is causing a kind of restlessness, an urge to keep moving, as one friend put it. By far, it does not only affect the love for travelling. It also extents to business life: I cannot imagine doing the same tasks in the same environment over and over again. From my point of view, having a certain amount of constant change in life is a good thing as it brings some sort of pleasant variety and never lets you rust.
Whenever going to new places, one will automatically meet new people and new cultures. From my perception, you can never fully understand countries, people and cultures just from third party information (e.g. via books and movies). Living in Germany, distances between the major cities are short and everyone shares a common language. Even the European Union is, in terms of surface area, comparably small. Most people speak a second language next to their mother tongue, many countries share the same currency and movement between countries is not restricted at all. I think that some young Europeans consider that as a given. Travelling through countries like India or Uganda, I realized that Western Europe is more of an exception than the rule. Many states have come only recently into existence and partially started as pretty artificial buildings as their inhabitants speak manifold languages, come from various traditions and cultures and are sometimes incredibly big in terms of size. For most people, it is either expensive and/or almost impossible to obtain visas to visit other countries. In such areas, travelling comes with a lot of learning. And you learn in a way that television news and documentaries cannot achieve.
From my experience, the fact that some people can hardly leave their country makes them to ambassadors at home. Do you feel fully represented by your country’s officials and by what is reported about it in media? Most people will probably answer this question with a no, independent from their place of birth. If it is answered on a defined scale, e.g. one to ten, the results might be more diverse. Especially in Lebanon and Iran, both regularly dominating the headlines with rather sad occurrences, I met an uncountable number of people, who all shared one thing: an unbelievable hospitality. Meeting people from other countries is also interesting from the opposite angle: How is your home country perceived in other parts of the world? From what I can tell, Germans are usually quite popular, despite having led the world into chaos already twice. Meeting people, you will eventually realize that – with the help of translation tools and topics, which are popular all around the world – you can even have conversations without really speaking each other’s language. I very well remember an evening in Istanbul, where a friend and I were enjoying a few drinks close to the famous Galata Tower, whilst getting to know some young local folks. One of them told us that he was from Kurdistan, a region, which stretches across parts of several countries, but never came into existence as an individual state. On an institutional level there is a lot of tension about topics like this, but on a personal level you realize that we are all alike – independent from skin colour, religion and geographical origin. The world is full of prejudices and I know friends who actively share their believes and culture to others while being abroad.
Observing other societies and meeting other people sets things into perspective. Of course, problems have to be seen mostly on a relative scale. Nevertheless, it helps to get a look at the literally big picture. I remember hiking out of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest after a couple of incredible hours full of studying gorillas, when one of the guides asked me what I do for a living. How can you explain the complex, sometimes stressful corporate life to someone, whose job, protecting wildlife at almost all costs, has an existential meaning? Surely, the discussions you have with other people and other departments, often haunting you after the formal end of the workday, become much less important in such moments.
Next to eventually seeing gorillas or other impressive creatures, hiking through a rain forest, comes with the allure of adventure. This applies also to other activities, like hiking up a mountain, looking into deep valleys, or being on a small boat, with crocodiles relaxing at the shores left and right of you. I never take great risks and I tend to over-prepare things, but, to some degree, being in a remotely adventurous situation, makes me feel truly alive. Living without having this feeling occasionally? No way. And, in general, the world is a much better place than the media often suggests.
Considering that this is the only life we got, it might seem totally bonkers to risk it. But maybe this is also one of the reasons why we travel: to see what we can whilst we can. Nobody knows how much time we have left. And independent from that: what will we remember at the end of it? Of course, this is not meant to be an invitation to live a ruthless life. Travel is causing problems, e.g. over-tourism and in general environmental pollution. But at the same time, it brings economic growth to some countries, and boosts cultural exchange. Where would today’s Europe be without French and Germans visiting each other on holiday instead of a military campaign? We will have to find ways how to travel less destructively and more responsibly. Travelling also allows us to stay in touch with friends. Today’s world is international, many have friends working for one or the other reason abroad. Modern technologies allow us to meet virtually, but they clearly cannot replace a face to face meeting.
Leaving the big words behind, there is one last reason which keeps us travelling: hobbies. I like photography, others like diving, climbing or something else. In many cases, we cannot perform these hobbies at home, at least to a fully satisfying extent. Japan’s Itsukushima was a beautiful place to visit, but what really made it special for me, was to take lots of pictures, playing with the aperture of my camera.
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