Does the Emperor of Travel-Land Have No Clothes?

.Why do we travel...really? (If you think the
answer to this question is too bleedin' obvious,
then you may wish to leave the room now.) There
are more answers to this question than you might
at first think - Lonely Planet author Sam Benson
has a crack at some of them:

Exploring the psychology of travel can be like
visiting an open-air hospital for the mildly
deranged. Wandering the grounds, you might find
neurotic travel virgins, addicts to extreme
adventure, masochist budget slaves and those with
obsessive-compulsive disorders who count countries
they’ve been to the same way Rain Man counted
cards. After a time, some families begin to wonder
if, in fact, their most nomadic members should be
committed – just ask my mother.

What drives some of us to this madness is as
vexing a question as – not to put too fine a point
on it – the meaning of life. Yet the majority of
psychologists have neglected to speculate on why
some of us are recklessly driven to travel beyond
all reason and often beyond our means. Amusingly
enough, one road warrior from the Thorn Tree
writes, 'My shrink tells me it's the result of an
unstable personality and sociopathic tendencies,
[because then] I don’t have to be with the same
people all the time.'
Another anonymous source from inside Lonely (or
should we say Loony?) Planet confesses she’s
travelled for love a few times, to escape herself
at other times, and that 'If you see a pattern of
desperation here, please send therapists’ contact
details.' Does this sound familiar?

Some of the reasons we trot around the globe are
obvious – escapism, family vacations, chasing
after lovers – but others, those hidden deep
within our psyches, are as quirky as our own DNA.
Yet, oddly enough, the typical traveller's
inquisition usually starts off with 'Where have
you been?' and 'How long are you out for?'. It
leaves the burning question of 'Why are you
traveling?' to rank somewhere down around 56th
place, along
with other unimportant details like your first
name. Is it possible that many of us actually
travel for no real reason at all, that the emperor
of travel-land has no clothes?

The genius writer Bruce Chatwin was obsessed with
travel, so much so that friends began to think him
slightly unhinged when he began theorising about
why humans don’t like staying in one place for too
long. According to his unfinished notebooks,
Chatwin believed that the nomadic existence was
the natural human state. Violence, war, suicidal
depression and other maladies were the
debilitating effects of modern civilization on
trapped psyches. For him life was rosy when we
were all packing up our tents and riding camels
off into the sunset.

A seductive theory, and one I personally agree
with, but where does the modern couch potato fit
in? Who can really explain why some of us exchange
comfortable hearth and home for sleeping on the
dirt floor of a Nepali trekking hut, fighting off
battalions of mosquitoes in Congo or enduring
tipsy ferries en route to remote Mediterranean
islands?

Perhaps Freud, the granddaddy of psychotherapy,
can enlighten us. Some of the psychological roots
of our wanderlust do seem to come straight out of
the id, which in Freud’s model of the mind is the
hedonist inside us all. Lust, gluttony and all of
the other sensational urges we keep on a short
leash at home tend to go a little wild on the
road. I’ve seen folks chase the best ganja from
Baja to Kathmandu, or fly thousands of miles to
meet a lover for a rendezvous in an anonymous
hotel room. As travel fuels the
fires of our loins, it also wraps us in an opiate
cloud of forgetfulness that lets us reinvent
ourselves. Hell, rogue criminals have known this
for centuries. As a Lonely Planet author, to keep
my anonymity on the road I often find myself
creating so many false identities that the Mission
Impossible theme song might as well be mine.

But, we hate to say it, even the most headlong
pursuit of pleasure – sheer escapism – can be a
bore. Eventually floating from country to country,
as any long-term traveller will testify, can lead
to ennui. At last, 'Why do I travel?' becomes a
relevant question.

For some, travel is the university of life. It may
be a cliche, but as oneThorn Tree pundit points
out, 'While working in Holland a few years ago, I
learnt how to roll a joint while riding a bike.
Name me a PhD course that teaches that.' More
sober folks really do travel to learn, whether a
new language or something more intangible. My
grandmother gallivants around Europe to see the
things she read about while growing up, anything
from the Passion Play at Oberammergau to the
British Museum or digging up
genealogical roots in Ireland.

Some of the earliest Western explorers were
actually quite learned travellers too, like the
French seaman La Perouse, who carried botanists,
astronomers, geographers, zoologists and
naturalists on his ships. One poet tells me that
her passion for travel comes from her passion for
literature. 'I always work literary landmarks and
local bookstores into my itineraries', she says.
'In Japan, I lived in Kawabata's hometown and
visited Rakushisha, a rustic hut in Arashiyama,
Kyoto, where Basho spent some time and where
visitors are encouraged to write their own haiku.'

For others, daredevil risk will always be a
necessary ingredient of adventure. As Albert
Camus wrote, ‘What gives value to travel is fear.’
Some travellers get their dose from extreme sports
while surfing giant waves in the South Pacific or
hauling their snowboards up Mauna Kea volcano sans
lifts during the few times it actually snows in
Hawaii. A documentary filmmaker I know always goes
straight to the 'bad
neighbourhoods' of anywhere she visits,
successfully searching out the cultural
underground. Then there was the Japanese guy who
was seen pedalling his way across the Australian
outback last year on a non-motorised scooter with
only a water tank, backpack and didgeridoo!

Many travellers dream up their own no less
eccentric, if a bit more tame quests. A fellow
hosteller admitted to me that he always went in
search of the local beef jerky wherever he went.
His adventures in tracking that succulent delicacy
to the source were always revealing of the local
culture in ways simply visiting a museum couldn’t
be. I am personally bewitched by border
checkpoints, the more obscure and difficult, the
better. Having a bit of trouble getting somewhere
adds value to my journey.

If you still need to whet your appetite for
globe-trotting anew, perhaps a little armchair
wandering over travel literature is in order. Or
start digging into the culture before you even
leave home, like the acquaintance of mine who
immersed herself in sacred hula before her trip to
the Hawaiian islands. Volunteering can be an
excellent way to a different sort of adventure.
How about helping to restore ancient ruins or
battling alien
invasions (of plant and animal species, that is)?
Instead of travel being an impediment to a real
adult life, as my aunt so succinctly puts it, the
experience you gain can actually further that
elusive thing called a career once you return home.

Many people eventually find that travelling
becomes more about the process, not the
destination. For them, travel is a way to live
purely in the moment, all five senses fully
saturated but unfiltered by books, TV or the
experiences of those who have gone there before
them. Travel fills our heads with images that we
can’t get anywhere else. 'When life has its blank
moments, you have nothing to work with but your
memory', says a
friend of mine in New York City. 'One of the best
ways to give yourself a good databank of things to
dream about is to travel.'

As one airline advertisement recently intoned,
'The next time your life flashes before your eyes,
make sure you've got plenty to watch'. In today's
world, maybe the only unbeaten paths are
intangible ones between people and cultures, not
to places. At night when I close my eyes and try
to soak in the experiences I've had, it's faces
that I remember: the chef who cooked our yak
steaks in Nepal, the Tibetan nomad who gave me her
baby to take care of while she made tea, or the
truck driver who snuck me into Northern Ireland on
an old bootlegging road.

Why do we travel? Perhaps this is a question
without a rational answer. After all, it may be as
simple as, 'Why eat breakfast in your boring
kitchen when you can eat it in the Amazon or in
Paris or on a mountain?' as my old roommate
suggests. The passion to roam the earth may be in
our bones, but hopefully we can pick up a little
enlightenment along the way. It is all a matter of
perspective – the more global the perspective, the
better. So let your crazy love of travel shine
this year! Even your shrink couldn’t possibly object.


-from lonelyplanet .com ( im posting it here coz it caught my attention)