Guesthouse:Travel philosophy

From ShunpikerWiki

Please feel free to relate any experiences and wisdom that you may have gathered on the theory and practice of travel.

Contents 1 Travel Quotes 2 Spontanaeity 3 Culture Shock 4 Authenticity and Pretense 4.1 "Traveler" or "Anti-Tourist"? 4.2 "Tourist" or "Traveler"? 5 Attitude

Travel Quotes

Whether they are wisdom or mere platitudes, here are some quips to ponder:

• "I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad". (George Bernard Shaw)
• "The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are". (Samuel Johnson)
• "...people don't take trips -- trips take people." (John Steinbeck)
• "Even disaster -- there are always disasters -- can be turned into adventures" (Marilyn French)
• "If you come to a fork in the road, take it". (Yogi Berra)
• "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving". (Lao Tzu)
• "If an ass goes traveling, he'll not come home a horse". (Thomas Fuller)
• "The great object in life is Sensation -- to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment." (Byron)

Spontanaeity

The People's Guide to Mexico (Lorena Havens & Steve Rogers, ISBN 1566914345) has some great advice that probably applies just about wherever your travels take you:

Personal interests and energy level are very important. Many travelers fail to take them into account, however, and instead force themselves into the type of trip they assume they should be making.

A good example of this is the Church-Ruin-Runaround, usually two or three weeks of frantic cathedral-gazing and temple-crawling that leave the tourist completely exhausted. [...]

Another trap is the I-am-a-camera routine. Victims can be seen with their Instamatics and videocams grafted to their faces, madly capturing miles of overexposures. [...]

A travel routine is not a schedule and should not be allowed to insidiously evolve into one. A travel routine is a loose plan that helps you enjoy a trip more by taking into consideration such things as your stamina, your mode of travel, what you want to do with your time, how much money you have, etc. [...]

Schedules, on the other hand, immediately put you in the position of having to do something. Indulge yourself. If your true interests are lounging in sidewalk cafés or sitting on warm beaches, staring mindlessly out to sea, then do it. Throw away your guidebooks and leave the camera in the closet.

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel (Rolf Potts, ISBN 0812992180) adds, in a similar vein:

The reason so many travelers become frustrated while visiting world-famous destinations is that they are still playing by the rules of home, which "reward" you for following set routines and protocols. Thus, on the road, you should never forget that you are uniquely in control of your own agenda. If the line for Lenin's tomb outside the Kremlin is too long, you have the right to buy a couple bottles of beer, plant yourslef at the edge of Red Square, and happily watch the rest of Moscow swirl around you.

Culture Shock

The Art of Crossing Cultures (Craig Storti, ISBN 1857882962) is a great reference on this topic, and includes the following advice:

• The first and most important is to know it's coming; part of the shock of country shock is not expecting it.
• In general, then, the way to prevent cultural incidents is to stop assuming that other people are like us. [...] first we have to realize that we have this expectation, and second we have to start expecting the local people to simply be themselves.
• The best way to become aware of your reactions to cultural incidents is to schedule a time during or at the end of every day when you deliberately try to recall moments when you were upset or agitated by something a local person did. [...] Over time and with repeated practice, you should eventually reach the point of simultaneous awareness.
• Always try to understand before you judge, but once you have understood, you must judge. Otherwise, you risk compromising your own identity.

Authenticity and Pretense

Rolf Potts' Vagabonding considers the consequences of affecting authenticity:

"Traveler" or "Anti-Tourist"?

Of course, habitual avoidance of the "sights" can be a cliché in itself -- especially witing the pseudo-counterculture crowd that Paul Fussell called "anti-tourists." "The anti-tourist is not to be confused with the traveler," wrote Fussell in Abroad. "His motive is not inquiry but self-protection and vanity." Ostentatiously dressing in local fashions, deliberately not carrying a camera, and "sedulously avoiding the standard sights," the antitourist doesn't have much integrity beyond his self-conscious decision to stand apart from other tourists.

So endemic is this mentality that many beginning wanderers are looped into the antitourist mind-set from their first day on the road. In the backpacker satire Are You Experienced?, pop novelist William Sutcliffe comically portrays a group of young travelers who can't figure out what to do while avoiding the tourist mainstream in India.

"Tourist" or "Traveler"?

Depending upon circumstance, a sincere vagabonder could variously be called a traveler or a tourist, a pilgrim or a satyr, a victor or a victim, and individual seeker or a demographic trend. Indeed, the main conceit in trying to distinguish travelers from tourists is that you end up with a flimsy facade of presumed insiders and outsiders. By the vacuous standards of fashion, insiders and outsiders are necessary, but in the realm of travel (where, by definition, you are always a guest in foreign places) such a distinction is ridiculous.

Attitude

One of my main challenges in traveling is to break myself of the habit of allowing my mood to follow my level of physical comfort, and some of my happiest traveling memories come from times when I was able to free myself from the compulsion to complain and find fault. Does anyone have any advice along these lines? -- Riley 10:05, 10 April 2006 (GMT)