My travel philosophy August 30, 2008

|Music| ‘Right between the eyes’ – Garbage

 

People travel for different reasons. Even though its usually categorized as ‘leisure’ or ‘business’, the ‘leisure’ can mean so many different things.

 

Based on my personal experiences,  when most of the people I know book tours, they usually like to choose scenic places where the scenery is beautiful complete with waterfalls and canyons and lush valleys or snow capped mountains.

 

And it is through these travels that they dish out what is considered “useful” advice to their fellow travel-o-holics aka family members. Most of them seem to feel that places are only worth visiting if

1. the scenery is beautiful

2. the shopping is great

 

Other than that, they don’t seem to consider other places of interest as a must-go travel location.

 

I can’t say I agree with their travel philosophy. But I’m not completely disagreeing either. I mean, who doesn’t want to have a chance to go to a waterfall and hear, first hand, the thunderous roar of the water plunging down or travel to snow capped peaks and relish the sensation of being on a majestic mountain?

I’m pretty sure thats the reason why majority of the tourists travel for leisure.

I like travel for that purpose too, that I can have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view the natural wonders of the Earth.

 

Other places, unless its extremely famous, are usually deemed as not worth visiting, even though they represent the flourishing ancient civilisations and rich history of the place.

 

So because majority of the people judge a place based on its natural scenery and not anything else, only places with beautiful scenery are praised for being a place worth visiting and other places that, unfortunately, do not have that great scenery but interesting culture and countless museums are labelled “boring”.

 

I know it sounds like I’m putting natural scenery down. It seems like I’m calling it a worthless visit. But i’m not. I’m just trying to prove my point that we should not judge how great a place is for travel solely based on how beautiful its scenery is.

 

I don’t even know why I’m so annoyed. Maybe its because whenever someone comes back from a particular country, others always want to know how the place was, and then the first question is always, “Is the scenery nice?”. I hate it, I cannot stand it. How can you judge a place based on jsut ONE factor? It’s unfair, all countries are different!

 

Why should the attractiveness of a place be judged based only on how physically beautiful it is? Don’t you agree that that’s completely shallow and superficial? What about the experiences that you will get to have while riding rapids or learning about ancient civilisations? Or the rich culture and friendly people? Does that not count?

 

That’s jsut DISCRIMINATION. If it makes no sense to do that to a person, wy would you do that to a place? (I’m quoting Kevjumba)

 

Another time I was hearing this person speak of Europe as boring because the food was mediocre and there wasn’t much to see.

 

I beg to differ.

 

EUROPE, BORING?! Oh yes, obviously if you cannot appreciate the beauty of the art in the Louvre museum or the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain or the baroque houses it will be boring! Just because a place does not have scenery to offer does not make it any more inferior than a place that has nothing but lush greenery and white sandy beaches.

 

I know that I will be offending many people by saying this, but I really do prefer visiting places of historical and cultural value than just natural locations. It’s like Auschwitz VS The Great Barrier Reef. Or The Inca Pyramids VS Niagara Falls. In these cases, I will definitely pick Auschwitz and The Inca Pyramids(in Peru).

 

Natural locations do not excite me as much as places of historical interest simply because at the natural locations all we do is see, take photos and jostle with the tourists there. It’s beautiful, no doubt, but other than looking and appreaciating the scenery there’s nothing fascinating to learn about. At places of historical interests, I can learn about so many different things, about how the people were in the past, how the ancient civilisation reached its golden age and how archaeologists managed to uncover so much information.

 

Of course, there are exceptions. I do not like visiting temples or churches. I know they are places of historical interest, but more often than not, its usually the same. Nothing great happened there, theres nothing fascinating to learn about other than people worshipped there. The only thing to admire is the art, and even THAT gets boring after awhile because its usually the same old thing. In that circumstance, I would obviously choose to go ona cave exploration which is definitely more interesting and suspense-filled and adventurous.

 

Above all, I like going to places where I can have adventure and excitement and also fascination. Not just plain beauty. Beauty is common, but adventure is always different.

 

As you can tell, I’m looking for adventure, not relaxation. I do not like relaxed tours. One reason benig that I will not be exhausted and hence cannot sleep at night and another reason being I feel I get to be more relaxed on rushed tours. You say that there’s no room for relaxation in rushed tours. But rushing is MY idea of relaxation on holiday. I like the natural high that it gives because you feel as if you’re on a great adventure.

 

If I wanted something slow I can just read at home, or watch TV. Why would I pay thousands to do that when I could be doing something WAY more interesting and exciting, especially since I don’t ge to do it at home?

 

SO anyway the bottomline is:

Don’t choose a travel location based on others’ opinions. It’s complete unreliable, unless you feel that your opinion matches that of the social majority. Pick a location based SOLELY on your interests, never mind that others say its boring. Its your money and only your opinion matters.