BootsnAll Travel Community

I don't mean so much in the sense of the tourist versus traveller distinction, but what experiences or attitudes does it take to turn somebody into a traveller? I've been thinking about it lately because a couple of friends have referred to me as being one. While I'm on my 4th passport, did the Peace Corps, am skilled at finding cheap airline tickets, and have covered a lot of territory in the Western Hemisphere, I don't know if I'd say I have the right to claim my traveller merit badge. I've barely been to Europe, haven't spent any real time here in the US (especially the NPS), and haven't been to Asia or Africa. Plus other than Peace Corps, all of my trips have been short jaunts and I've yet to do a R-T-W/vagabonding jaunt. So it was a surprise to have a couple of people tell me that they thought of me as being a traveller, especially in terms of having all this great experience & cred. Is it all relative and based more on your attitude? Or do I just need to finally break down and do something like a R-T-W so that I can get over feeling like I'm not quite at traveller level yet?

Think of your spelling it with two ll and that they can represent the road, railway tracks, a runway, sides of a ship - what more do you need?

You'll do fine with or w/o the rtw, but if you have a job or whatever like most people, then like most you probably work more and travel a bit.

If you're expecting to be knighted or whatever, well then go and get knighted but some people could think one is a bit full of themselves.

Why would you have to go everywhere to consider yourself a traveler? Anyone who leaves their home is a traveler, so long as they're experiencing each minute/interaction/flavor/raindrop as something new. Three trips around one city block could be completely different if you've got your eyes open.

And consider this: If someone were to circle the globe for the sake of being called a traveler, charging forth without absorbing their surroundings, can you really call them a traveler? I mean, they're moving but what are they giving/getting out of it?

I think that if you are present in the things you do and the paths you take then you are a traveler, no matter how near or far you go.

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Why would you have to go everywhere to consider yourself a traveler? Anyone who leaves their home is a traveler, so long as they're experiencing each minute/interaction/flavor/raindrop as something new. Three trips around one city block could be completely different if you've got your eyes open.

If they are not "experiencing each minute/interaction/flavor/raindrop as something new" are they not travelling? If they do it differently than you, does it then not qualify as travel? Can they no longer use the word traveller because the way they do it is to different standard?

Any person who goes anywhere is travelling. No one owns the word and there is no appointed group to set the definition. We set our own standards for who and what a traveller is. There is no one common usage and meaning for this word. When a word can mean anything, it also means nothing.

We decide for ourselves whether or not we are travellers. We also decide if we consider some one else is a traveller. It is an opinion. Up is understood to be up. Traveller is maybe yes, maybe no.

You move from tourist to traveler when you become more pretentious. Big secret: the locals in Indonesia don't care what you call yourself. They typically want you to spend money, and the types who torture over the non-distinction between tourist and traveler don't usually tend to spend very much. This is the all-time stupidest "debate" you ever hear on the road. It's like arguing how many Stereolab albums you need to be a hipster.

Belch

there are lots and lots of discussions and thresds on this on bootsnall. you may enjoy reading them.

zopa

No, I think you're right, my2thhurts, that we don't all do it the same way. I'm not trying to put constraints on "being a traveler," I really just want to make the same point you did - that "anyone who goes anywhere is travelling."

I have 2 Stereolab albums....does that qualify me as a hipster?

I think I naturally grew out of labels in my twenties (I'm a newly minted 30 year old). With maturity comes wisdom, and I agree with an earlier poster's comments about being a traveler when you're awake and aware of the environment around you, regardless of where you are.

After my first experience in the jungle down in Costa Rica last year, I remember coming home and not thinking how mundane my mid-Atlantic (seen them all my life) neighborhood trees are, but rather how beautiful they were in their own right.

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I think I naturally grew out of labels in my twenties (I'm a newly minted 30 year old).

I think that you will find that many people - including here - have not. It is a continuing theme, the idea that if you don't travel and interpet and react as I do, then you are not a "traveller."

Don't worry about titles. Don't wory about what others expect. Travel, see, and try to learn. If you are a traveller or not is irrelevent. What you are called is not as important as what you do. Just as how you judge others is not as important as how you live.

when you post more answers than questions on travel message boards

when you dont carry a guidebook (even for countries youve never been)

when whiny backpackers make you more annoyed than the locals

when youve filled no less than 25 pages in a passport AND have been on the road no less than six months of hard travel in one stint.

when you insist on fronting up for your own visas

when you make attempt to pick up local language, even though youll be incountry for a week.

when you cringe at eating at backpacker joints and insist on night markets, food stalls and street carts

when grasshoppers sound better than big-mac

when you can eat noodles/rice for breakfast - and love it

when you have spent at least two months (one stint) in india or africa.

when you have visited at least 10 hugely unstable countries

when you can travel alone for months at a go

when you give money or assistanec to a local person gravely injured.

when you learn not to visit people homes for meals

when you dont carry a water bottle (in hand as you walk from x to y)

when your pack is limited to ONE 30-38L bag including whisky, ipod, speakers, shortwave and external backup drive.

when you feel throughly comfortable in handling 98% of even the most dire travel mishap -becasue it has all happend many times before.

when you can bed down in a dump and use a dire toilet knowing it will all be differnet when you catch the bus and arrive tomorrow.

when you constantly whinge on about the vagaries and inefficiencies of 3rd world travel - but know you have it better than 95% of the idiots back 'home' miserable, sitting at desks dreaming of a beach or mountaintop - and a better life.

when you prefer squat toilets and think nothing of using your hand to clean yourself.

when you no longer call home "home"

when your home is actually nothing more than a maildrop

when you get less than 12 pcs of mail at your maildrop per annum

when you are not overweight becasue you eat healthy food and get good excercise.

when you live on 15 dollars a day -and are content with it

A traveller is one who goes, whose destination is is either planned or unplanned, who sees life as a journey and the destination is only part of that. Too many people think only of the destination and not of the journey. A traveller can be at home anywhere they are. A traveller can stay in 5 star hotels or the meanest of hostels. They can carry a backpack or samsonite luggage. A traveller is what a traveller is.

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In from the coast, riding like the wind and racing the moon,
Shadows on the road, dancing and a-weaving like a crazy fool.
A horseman is coming, death in his heart, for a rendez-vous,
And where the traveller goes, nobody knows,
Where the traveller goes, nobody knows....