Traveling to distant places is also a journey to oneself
Last summer, I went on a surf road trip with friends along the coast of mainland Greece. My friends and I still cherish these memories, especially during these dark winter months. This time in Greece felt so light, carefree, and somehow timeless. Waking up slowly to the sound of waves, blinking into the already warm sun, jumping into the blue ocean, and then being greeted by the welcoming aroma of coffee. Preparing breakfast together and picking up on last night’s conversations. Or dancing while preparing dinner with a cool drink in hand, gazing at the sea where the setting sun leaves behind a magnificent play of light. Living in the here and now, quite literally this time.
Why did this trip feel so effortless for all of us? Was it the oft-mentioned Mediterranean lightness, the brief escape from everyday life, or from the omnipresent global political crises? Is it our close friendship, where we can be exactly who we are? This point is definitely crucial. How closely connected you feel with your friends and travel companions. Absolutely, no question about it!
But would these carefree feelings have been the same, would this lightness have emerged in the same way if we had booked several weeks at an all-inclusive hotel in Greece by plane? I don’t think so! So what creates the lightness of this road trip, of traveling with your own van or camper?
Perhaps it’s because we can no longer truly relax into the journey? Trapped in a modern hectic world where we’re always forced to be effective and achieve everything quickly. Immediately and without great effort. We’re always just one click away from the next sensation. This is often how our vacation or travel looks too. Quickly flying somewhere for a week, grabbing a coffee to go and a sandwich on the way to the airport, quickly snapping a photo for the next Instagram story, and before you know it, you’re already at your destination. Resisting this is difficult, and for some people, it’s often the only way possible to vacation in another part of the world. Or they don’t have the opportunity to travel longer and therefore more slowly. I gratefully embrace this modern convenience of fast travel, just like many others.
But perhaps we should more often ask ourselves: Isn’t the journey to the destination also an important part of the trip? Doesn’t some of the pleasure of traveling disappear when we focus too much on the destination? This is also how the Slow Travel movement sees it, which puts slow and mindful travel at the center. It’s the opposite of mass tourism and aims to create travel experiences that are qualitative rather than quantitative. And this works better when you move through the country by bus, train, foot, or bicycle, traveling more slowly as a result. When we don’t check off attractions as if they were items on a shopping list, but instead do one thing at a time and absorb the impressions at our own pace.
This conscious deceleration is what I enjoy so much about a road trip. You can move at your own individual pace and decide how long you want to stay in one place. You stay where you like it, explore the area away from the well-known tourist hotspots, and thus come into contact with people along the way. Often that’s where you experience the biggest surprises. We didn’t find the best vegetables in a store in a well-developed city, but in the rural countryside, where we could only communicate with hand gestures. But still, we all smiled at each other, laughed, and connected non-verbally. And that makes you feel blessed and happy. Yes, simply being human!
A friend once said about his long bicycle journey to the southeastern region of Europe:
“The poorer the countries became, the happier and more empathetic the people were. This should give us something to think about in our prosperity-spoiled and self-centered industrialized nations.”
I’ve often asked myself why I have this perpetual longing to travel to other places. Sometimes I hear: Oh, you’re traveling again! Of course, I’m aware that this is an enormous luxury. But if you look at it more closely, traveling is actually connected to everything that makes us human beings. The curiosity, the urge to expand our intellect, to look beyond our own horizon, and to broaden our personal worldview. McKenzie Barney, the American who cycled around the world and documented it in her film “Cycling The World,” once said in an interview:
“I value time as the ultimate wealth. Experiences are more important than money. Stories are more important than material things.”
I think this approach of reaching out to others while traveling and spontaneously adapting to new unfamiliar circumstances is more relevant than ever in our time today. In a time where right-wing and nationalistically driven political movements are gaining more popularity in Western liberal democracies and isolation is seen as a cure-all. Travel is also about understanding others, stepping out of your comfort zone, and viewing the world from unfamiliar perspectives. Those who travel are neither narrow-minded nor prejudiced. Those who know and understand other regions of the world encounter the unfamiliar without fear. Because perceived fear, not reason, is often an important component of our human actions, our emotion-driven and unconscious autopilot system of our brain. There is a direct connection between negative news and our feeling of fear, which leads us to become even more fearful and reject everything new and foreign. Yet a conscious journey can help to see how the different parts of the Earth are somehow all connected. That despite our different cultures and languages, we are all united in wanting to live in peace and happiness on this blue planet.
Philosopher Alain de Botton once put it this way:
“Great thoughts sometimes need great views. New thoughts, new places.”
Perhaps we should all start to travel properly again – consciously and slowly into unfamiliar territories outside our comfort zones, but also into ourselves, to our innermost being and to our fellow human beings.
Take Care,
Tobias
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