First-hand Traveling

I haven’t traveled much outside of the U.S., but my main ambition in life is to see as many places as I can. In the accounts we’ve read in class, the travelers leave their homes for completely new lands; either to known countries that haven’t been visited by many (if any) outsiders or to lands that are completely new territory. But in our globalized age, practically everywhere is inhabited and has been visited by foreigners. Besides venturing into space (which I would love to do), there’s hardly a place I can go that hasn’t been written about by someone who’s already been there. Without the lure of the complete unknown, what does traveling offer people today?
 
Of course, governments still colonize foreign lands, and modern merchants still travel for business purposes. But I think for the every-day traveler seeking adventure, travel is necessary if only for first-hand experience. It’s incredibly easy to watch videos or read books about a place and think you know it. But as we’ve seen in the course’s readings, these accounts are usually biased. People idealize or demonize, whether they intend to or not. The only way to know for sure what a place and its people are like is to go there yourself; this also lets a person react to a different culture based on his own disposition and preferences.
 
This raises two considerations. Firstly, while its clearly convenient and sometimes arguably necessary to research a place before traveling there, I think embarking with no preconceived notions can also have its advantages, as long as the traveler is careful. To me, the most compelling part of the classic travelogues was the excitement with which the men viewed foreign lands. My parents are the type that meticulously plan every vacation and weekend trip, so I felt like I had already taken the trip before we even left. But my favorite trip was an unplanned road trip I took with a friend, because even the most mundane towns we passed through were made exciting by the prospect of the unknown. Even though it’s easy to learn everything about a foreign place before booking an airline ticket, I think there’s something to be said for spontaneity, in that it allows the traveler to capture some of the explorer’s spirit of true travel pioneers. Secondly, I’ve realized how to – and how not to – approach foreign cultures in order to best enjoy them for what they are. Of course, people from a different culture will always be “others” to a traveler, and vice versa. But travelers like Cabeza de Vaca, Marco Polo, and Herodotus appreciated differences and tried to keep judgment to a minimum. I certainly won’t ever travel with the intent of colonizing the people I encounter, but the Western “conqueror” attitude could cause me or other Americans to patronize so-called underdeveloped cultures if we let it. As trite as it may sound, remembering that all people are equal seems to be the only way to truly understand and value a foreign culture for what it is.
 
These thoughts on how to approach travel are not new to me, but the classic readings from this course gave me new perspective on what it means to travel today. Though we now have the luxury of easily accessible resources to educate ourselves about foreign places, second-hand travel seems even less appealing to me. For one thing, the writer’s account, while possibly interesting and enlightening, could be biased to the point of fictionalization. But most importantly, reading about a place gives only a shadow of its culture – and the only real way to understand it and form an opinion on it is to travel there yourself.