Aimless Travel: Traveling Without Scheduled Plans

Travel usually involves a set destination with set plans once one gets there. Itineraries are made, arrangements are taken, schedules are set; while such an approach to travel would ensure that one gets to maximize one's time, sometimes it is also best to just 'be' when one travels.

Lao Tzu, one of Taoism's most revered figures, advocated an aimless form of traveling. One ceases to have plans or goals for travel, other than to simply in the state of the moment. While this may not appeal to certain mindsets, what with travel usually associated with structured activities and schedules, it has its real benefits.

First of all, aimless travel allows the traveler to simply enjoy the travel itself - from the journey, to the company, to the random events that may transpire. Often, focusing on doing particular objects distracts us from other objects that may prove more entertaining or may provide better insights than the original, desired object. Aimless travel allows the individual or even group travelers to simply belong in the moment and enjoy whatever may happen, unconstrained by time and schedules.

Secondly, aimless travel has the side effect of being less expensive. Travel, especially in the Western hemisphere, is a highly structured and commercialized affair. One must plan for lodging, food, and then activities, all falling within a distinct 'touristy' flavor. Aimless travel inspires creativity and spontaneousness, and with both inspirations allows the traveler different and completely new perspectives on an area. This new perspective allows the traveler to have a different experience from more traditional, constricted travelers.

The point of travel, essentially, is not to do things or to see certain sights. Those are the actions one does to get sensations, similar to the role of using a spoon and fork when eating, accessories to its real purpose - that of imparting a sense of newness and enjoyment to the traveler. The common and the expected can be found at home, and travel serves to enlarge one's perspectives and create new paradigms and insights in a person.

A constricted, traditional kind of travel will simply limit the eye-opening character of travel, since plans are made in advance and with one's current knowledge; thus the future possibility of spontaneous discovery and the random twists and turns are sacrificed for the comfort of knowing what is going to happen, and when.

Aimless traveling ultimately achieves the aim of the sincere traveler.