Everyone on this site...including myself...seems to have such a love and passion for traveling. I'm intrigued to find out what makes YOU want to leave everything you know to travel the world. Why did YOU make the choice to travel...when so many others do not???
I think it's just part of our nature to want to explore the unfamiliar.
As far as why others seem to have no interest in the outside world, and would just as soon sit in front of their TV than travel, I can't even begin to explain.
Posts: 226 | Location: Ithaca, New York, USA. | Registered: 18 October 2005
many reasons, some good, some bad. Some both. First there is the curiousity about other places. The desire to see the places I've read about. A genuine interest in the world. the desire for adventure, a less ordinary life. Trying to give my life a good narrative.
Then sometimes I think I do it to run away from my problems. Like as a kid I was forever packing up my teddy bear and "running away" though I never got more than a mile from home. Problem is, the problems tend to follow.
Posts: 70 | Location: Uganda | Registered: 28 October 2005
I do it for the sense of adventure, the escape from the everyday, I do it because I'm afraid to do it, afraid that I'll never get the oportunity again. I do it because I am on the constant lookout for further self-fulfillment!
Like everyone else, I do it for the sense of adventure. An exercise of the mind and body. The travel experience opens up venues in my mind, changes my perception, my view of people, the world. I like the feeling of contentment when I get back home. The stories and experiences, both good and bad, are worth it. I like meeting people also. Who knows, the world is constantly changing. When will I ever get the opportunity to see this or that place again? Sometimes I feel, it's in my blood an urge to seek change, see different places, people, things.
I do it for all the reasons above, but I do it because I don't belong at home with people who all lived their lives there. I'm Chinese by race, Brazilian by birth, Portuguese while growing up, and with a bit of an American culture mixed in. I have no 'home country' or 'home culture', akin to people whose parents are from different races (I'm 100% Chinese tho - just culturally I'm from everywhere)
If I've learned anything about myself during these 8 months of travel is that being out here meeting a group of people from all different cultures is when I feel the least different and the most alive.
The world is big enough that it seems quite ridiculous to live all your life in one city/country.
We do it because, well, why not... I have yet to meet a person hearing I am going RTW that deosn't say,I wish I did that. I think those that do it are able to take a moment and realize that all the things that we think hold us back (money, jobs, responsibility) are things that can be overcome...
We leave from phoenix in february for our RTW. We have very little planned and will know our main destinations, but then take it from there. We have a small budget, lots of dreams - and we'll see what we can get done!!!!!!
But the only difference I see between me and my friends that wish they could do this, is the ability to let go of things that they think hold them back....
Posts: 30 | Location: AZ | Registered: 31 December 2004
I like to say I've seen just too much of the world to ever sit anywhere and pretend the rest of it didn't exist. I like to say that, but that doesn't really explain much. Travel is an incurable disease that you catch overseas. It gets into your bloodstream and has its way with you. Once you've contracted it it will gnaw at you for life if you don't keep feeding it.
When I was small my parents moved us around and took us traveling. So I feel I didn't really have a choice. I was introduced to the disease at an early age and by force. But my sisters were mostly spared. They must have had fiercer antibodies than I. Travel became a safety net, a protective blanket that sheltered me from the responsibilities that come with maintaining relationships. Travel became, for me, a constant running away. I used to need travel. It was a childish, selfish relationship with travel, but had I not had it to add to and improve upon I might not have realized the fulfilling qualities of travel. Somehow I matured, maybe by accident, and travel, for me, has taken on a completely new meaning. I used to travel to run away from things that frightened me. I still travel because I am afraid, but I'm running now towards that which frightens me. I travel now because I am afraid of traveling, I am afraid of meeting new people, and I am afraid of dying. Now living a safe and normal life would be, for me, running away from my fears. I travel mostly because I am afraid of traveling. There is also that infectious itch wanting to be fed. Right now I am in school and not currently able to travel. But my fear of not traveling is large and right now I am facing it. Next summer I'll be in Guatemala hopefully improving my Spanish. When I graduate I plan to spend a year or more in South America, traveling, maybe working for some of the time, maybe not. Travel for me is both something I love (the act of creation disguised as discovery is mesmerizingly beautiful) and a challenge. It makes me stronger, more tolerant, by putting me in situations of weakness. It is also an act of relinquishing strength, of relinquishing control, and letting yourself... hang... in the balance, putting yourself at the whim of circumstance.
======== "I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble." --Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon
Posts: 16 | Location: San Francisco, CA | Registered: 29 October 2005
it's very easy to hide from yourself when you stay in the same place, doing the same thing with the same people day after day after week after week. The point at which you stop being 'yourself' and instead become the person your obligations and peers expect you to be comes much quicker in the face of routine.
And there is a glorious liberation to being lost and alone in somewhere completely unfamiliar. When you run away and eventually return that feeling lingers. Then you can be a stranger at home for a little while.
Which is why I get the itch to leave, go, be gone...then come home.
what silent_confusion said sounds like they were in my head this morning.
i travel for many reasons. i like the perks. the easy-to-make, easy-to-leave friends. how you can have everything in the world with no strings attached. anonymity. you can live a life as a completely different person, while discovering and building on whomever you REALLY are.
i love being able to let go. not worry about tomorrow, not dwell on yesterday, and live each day for the place you are in and the people you are around. trying to soak up as much of what is around you as is possible. setting personal goals, achieving them. utter freedom.
and then you go back home to everyday life. but you are not the same. you cannot sit idly back. they call it itchy feet. if it were only just that.
"lovely as a dream, lonesome as a sunday"
Posts: 33 | Location: New Zealand | Registered: 24 March 2005
I think I like the challenge, the phsysical challenge, and challenging my perceptions of how things done and how people are. When I travel I get to confront and question what I've been told is the 'way things are' and the views held in my country about these foreign places. I am always amazed at what I learn about myself and my own culture by confronting and adapting (trying) to other cultures.
You know what's interesting - with the exception of maybe one response above, nobody really says they primarily travel to learn about countries or cultures. That largely holds true for me too - it's always more of a personal journey.
Now if we're all traveling moreso because it's personally fulfilling or because it's an adventure for us, doesn't that highlight just how lucky we truly are? I think as often as we tell ourselves that we're the ones who realize what people at home take for granted, we sometimes even take that for granted, you know?
It's a personal struggle for me sometimes to not view the world as just this large playground and instead keep in mind what Rolf Potts wrote in his book. It was something along the lines of how hippies used to draw enlightened conclusions about whatever but to locals it was just civilian. I think the message was to just treat people in other countries as neighbors, nothing more.
So, to answer the thread's question, why do I do it...I do have goals for self-fulfillment but I guess it's also that I just think I should meet my neighbors.
Posts: 42 | Location: SF Bay Area | Registered: 07 January 2008
Honestly, I'm not on a journey of self discovery. I've always been comfortable with myself.
I enjoy traveling because I am constantly learning and discovering. I think it would be wrong to not see the world before I die considering I live an an age and time where it is possible to do so.
LOTS of reasons and perhaps some different than others as we travel as a family and a good part of it is for the freedom and to educate our child as a global citizen. We like slow travel and the time to really get to know a culture and people, to take in the sights and also do ordinary things in extraordinary places.
We are almost 17 months into an open ended multi-year trip around the world and the more we do it, the more we think this is how we were intended to live. Life as endless summer and as an endless field trip...what a concept. Life is short and there is so much beauty still to be seen. I think we have moved into the perpetual traveler camp. Thus far, we see no reason to stop.
We find that we can travel the world for much cheaper than we can living at home and the experiences enrich us in countless ways. We travel on very little,so are frugal in many ways, but also manage to have lots of splurges and luxuries on little. We have never been happier or more alive. We feel profoundly blessed by this experience and so glad that we decided to give ourselves this gift.
Hours spent watching the travel channel made me realize my company doesn't give me enough vacation hours to see all that I wanted to see! I figured it would be much easier to just take off for 2 to 3 years. Plus I thought I would waste more money on round trip airfare every 3 months to a different locationm then by just going around the world! Growing up my parents had home schooled me for a year while we travelled the US in a RV. That plus we moved every 3 years, which has always given me antzy feet. The need to experience new things helps get me out the door, that and a wonderful woman that wants to to it to!
I'm intrigued to find out what makes YOU want to leave everything you know to travel the world. Why did YOU make the choice to travel...when so many others do not???
