10 Reasons Why We Are Fond of Travelling
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When we were kids, the concept of an ‘indoor life’ did not hold much interest. Weekends and holidays were always about going to small rivers for a swim or a game of cricket in the fields. We spent time indoors only when we had to study or sleep.
As evolved beings, humans thirst for outdoor life. Our present lives, filled with laptops or mobile screens and constant notifications, add to our stress. It allows little or no time to venture out. But moving out of our familiar environments is still something we associate with relaxing or feeling leisurely, and we call it ‘travel’.
With the pandemic on the endgame (hopefully), travel experience has never been so wished for. Be it for tourist places or unexplored territory, check out 10 reasons why people love to travel!
1. Travel is the ultimate relaxation
Travel isn’t the first idea of ‘relaxation’ in our hectic lives. Massages, extended sleep hours or a movie night come to our minds first.
However, true relaxation is when you are entirely cut off from the circumstances of your life. And what better way to cut off from life than literally ‘moving out’?
Travel allows us to turn our life’s constant electricity off for once. It forces us to live a life we are not used to. This completely recharges us from the inside.
2. Travel helps you build perspective
When we visit other places, especially other countries, we experience a way of life we had never experienced before. When I went for a trek in the North District of Sikkim, I encountered the state’s original tribals who were master craftsmen living on complete self-reliance. In our globalised world, where specialisation and trade are the norms, it was truly refreshing to see a fresh approach to life.
Looking at various ways of leading life gives us ample points to ponder about the world. We learn that nothing is ever permanent, nothing is a set way; in fact, everything depends on the place and its people. We learn to appreciate others’ (and our own) way of life.
As Proust famously said, ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes’.
3. Travel lets you eat unique delicacies
Nothing ever tastes as good as the place it came from; for instance, momos from Tibet, pizza from Italy and chole bhature from North India.
Besides the available ones, there are certain delicacies you only find at the designated places. Some tourist places offer you the luxury of authentic cuisine with a sneak into its history.
To fill your tongues and bellies with wonders from remote corners of the world makes our hearts leap. Travel lets us experience the joy of new tastes. Just don’t be on a diet while travelling and savour every bit you can get!
4. Travel brings to light skills you didn’t know you had
Travel tests our limits. The best part of travel is its unpredictability, sometimes taking us to the edge.
Through such travel experiences, a silver lining almost always appears in the form of a latent skill.
Walking on steep mountain trails brings to light the stamina we didn’t know we had. Talking to someone who doesn’t know our language gets us to somehow communicate with them and even begin to understand what they say.
5. Travel experience builds your originality
The need to express is a fundamental need of ours. However, most of us shy off at expressing ourselves; our reasons being that these expressions aren’t ‘artistic’ or ‘original’.
But what creates originality? It is your inside stuff; as Tagore says, ‘In art, man reveals himself and not his objects’. You build your identity by becoming an original person, one who has their own view of the world and the things in it.
This is possible only when you have a diverse range of experiences. Diversity comes from experiences of travel. So explore!
Travelling changes you from the inside out. You no longer cling to beliefs and ideas as strongly as you did before.
You are open and you develop your perspective on various ideas and thoughts. You become an original person.
6. Travel makes you humble and empathetic
Every traveller throws their ego off their backpacks and brings home a bundle of humility.
From a simple help by a local to navigate through the countryside to a taxi driver allowing you to sleep at their place since no hotels were available in the tourist place, you get your share of humanity and empathy while travelling.
We learn to appreciate that no matter how culturally diverse we are, we all have inbuilt humanity that makes the core of us the same. We learn to appreciate the life that lies within all of us before we are separated by other labels of nationality, religion, sex, race or caste.
We become humble, more willing to listen and more curious about others’ life experiences. Travel is a crash course in building humility and empathy.
7. Travel is the only soul food you need
The whole of travel is one complete main course of food for the soul. By meeting different people, soaking in breathtaking scenery, tasting delicious cuisines and challenging yourself, you begin to reflect more on where you are, what your life has been like and what you need to do.
With so much diversity beyond your immediate reality, you start questioning what your life means to you. You get plenty of time to reflect and rejuvenate, and this allows you to have a long honest talk with yourself.
Various travel experiences reconnect you with yourself, making you realise you are your own best friend.
8. Travel is both your classroom and teacher
The best kind of learning is experiential learning because the stuff you take in is completely internalised. You do not have to worry about not remembering at the right time.
Travel experience gives you that big dose of learning, a completely empirical approach to life. Not all learning happens in a school and not all teachers are in the classroom. In fact, the biggest teacher is life.
Travel teaches us how to deal with situations as they arise and teaches us to live the moment. At the same time, travelling tests us, as if yanking, ‘here, now show me what you got!’
Travel brings forward our cornered identities; it is the ultimate teacher.
9. Travel fulfils your need for adventure
All of us want adventure. A rush of blood, a thrill, a sizzling moment. That’s why we head to tourist places to fly high on paragliding or swirl around swings in adventure parks.
Travel takes the safety net off our lives. It sets us on a new, unventured path. Everything we do is new and fresh, like the early morning sun.
There’s always a thrill in taking on a pursuit, which could be as small as trying out the ultra-spicy food or trying on that local dress where you know you look like a clown.
10. Travel makes you celebrate life
Finally, travel is about rediscovering who you are and who everyone else is.
The more variety you see, be it in terms of food, culture, language or people, you start to realise an underlying unity.
Travel gives you a boost of perspective, a high view of our planet, the people and other creatures living on it.
You start celebrating each of them as a part of yourself because that is the deep truth you uncover through your pursuit. You begin to associate more with everyone and everything. This, in turn, makes you celebrate life, and you understand what it means to live, to be alive.
Conclusion
Humans need to experience life in its fullness. Travel provides the perfect recipe for this endeavour. As the world opens its closed doors again, travelling has once again picked its speed.
Choose a tourist place, mountain, beach, forest or a city, and get your bags packed. Read articles to learn more about the places you are visiting, like the local cuisines, cultural norms and predominant language.
Visit the Cleartrip website to tailor-suit your travel experience. Explore yourself, your world and rebuild your connection again.
FAQs
Travelling allows you to explore new places, and with it, explore yourself. It enhances your perspective and aids in your personal growth.
Travelling triggers happiness. It builds new neural pathways in our brains owing to the new experiences. These pathways stimulate our creativity, expanding our happiness.
Research shows that the happiest people travel more.
Travelling lets you see the world in a new light, in ways you hadn’t even thought of.
Travelling is our biggest teacher. Some important lessons we learn from it are:
– Prioritise experiences over things
– Value other people and others’ points of view
– Get out of your comfort zone
– Craft the virtue of patience
– Experience the joys of life from moment to moment
Real education is based on experience. We forget words; however, we never forget moments. Experiential learning completely internalises the new knowledge or idea.
This is why travelling is the best form of education.
