Why We Travel

There are people who are quite happy working, living life and staying put, never set foot on another city, let alone a country. They are loyal to their friends, their family and most importantly, their comfortable lifestyle of never changing routines.

And then, there are people who are constantly on the go, never happy with routine and stability and have an itch to leave everything behind to experience the differences in the world. They may be loyal to their friends and families but hardly see them more than once a year.

I happen to be the second type. Perhaps not to that extreme, but nevertheless, take off as much as I financially can. Travelling is a bug and once caught, will stay with you for a very long time, perhaps, even forever. Even if you do stop travelling, there will never be a time you will not think about it; think about the people; think about the people you met while travelling; think about the places you have been; think about the places you haven't been. It becomes inner itch of wanting to explore, to experience new cultures, to learn new languages, to make new friends and to have the world under our feet.

People travel for different motives, and many other reasons to keep going.

David Dale, author of The Perfect Journey (2001) says travelling is an addiction. "Like any addiction, it's expensive. It can destroy relationships and families... I know I'm addicted because the only way I can treat the depression that sets in whenever I return from a journey is to start organising the next one... if travel if my heroin, then planning the next trip is my methadone."

Indeed, once you start, you can't stop. And there is a perfect explanation for this, as Pico Iyer, in his article titled Why We Travel says... "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.... And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again - to slow time down and betaken in, and fall in love once more"

A fascinating concept, comparing travel to falling in love, yet how true his claims are! When you fall in love, you become eager to taste the fruits of a new lust, like a journey into foreign lands where at first, you never are sure where you are going and what you are going to come across, yet persistently, slowly treading the waters to test its depth, and with an anticipation of something great will happen, open your eyes to see it all. Iyer in the same article describes every new trip as a new love affair, so easily pleased and so easily to lose yourselves in.

Then it's fair to say, that our reasons for travelling, is the same reasons that makes us fall in love; that curiosity of the unknown and the process of discovery, so seductive and lustful, comes in the forms of natural beauty and traditional cultures, knocking on the doors of our anticipating souls, ready to open our hearts to new worlds beyond our own. And in the process, becoming so addicted to travelling, that we forget sometimes we have other responsibilities.

However, unlike falling in love, there is no disappointment in travelling. There are only experiences and memories, and the urge to do it all again.

And that, is what keeps us travelling.