Since time immemorial people have moved about, attracted by resources like food or spiritual supplies (red ochre for burial customs; frankincense) or for the purpose of social networking. Or the travel may be compulsory: they have been forced to pick up their things by command or force. Or they flee from danger. In 2020, though, the basis for travel differs to those ancient reasons, since there are more people than ever before on the planet and of those, more and more have time and money and interest (motive and opportunity) for leaving familiar shores and spending a few days or weeks someplace else in leisure pursuits. The impact on local residents at the destination from these increasing numbers of transient strangers is the subject for another day, but today the results for the travelers who are passing through or who choose to abide awhile at the destination can be contemplated.
A good deal of today’s travel is obligatory — for work or training or education, or for social obligations (births, marriages, deaths). But one category of travel that has blossomed in the past few generations has been leisure travel in its many forms, whether it is a day-trip, a package vacation that is prepaid and largely scheduled by day and hour, or on the contrary something more open-ended in duration and daily structure. In some cases the trip accomplishes dual purposes, both business and pleasure; like the classic image of a “busman’s holiday” (spending a free hour as sort-of tourist, but still in uniform and ready to make the return trip on the bus route). Experientially, the leisure travels vary widely, depending if it is undertaken single-handedly (solo, unemcumbered by the needs of children), as fellow traveler, or in the hands of tour operator, for example; or instead, if it is a trip involving multiple persons’ interests and requirements.
For the purpose of this essay about reasons and results of engaging in leisure travel, the many forms of these travels will be simplified to the extreme case of one solitary traveler who plans, undertakes, and processes the experiences of the place being visited for purposes not related to (paid) work. By narrowing the many variables that would be involved to coordinate multiple travelers, it should be possible to dig deeper into the reasons why one makes a trip like this purely to satisfy one’s own desire and thus exclude the many other reasons to travel.
Surveys by tour operators and travel guide publishers seek out the sorts of attractions and organizing themes that move a person to travel outside the boundaries of one’s familiar terrain and topics, whether it is distant or nearby. Examples of what sorts of attractions draw travelers include nature, culture (heritage, performing arts), food and entertainment, sporting events, and so on. For the moment laying aside these specific appeals for a leisure trip, there is a fundamental distinction when one goes away as an escape FROM daily habits and places and faces versus going to escape TO something altogether new, unknown; or perhaps it is a trip for returning to a place as a “home away from home” (such as summer house, or annual rental cabin, or a destination country or region explored little by little, year after year). When the core motivation is to get away from daily routines, then the first footstep out the door accomplishes the purpose and all that follows is bonus material. But the equation is more complicated when the core motivation is to arrive at a new place carefully planned, casually reached, or entrusted to the hands of the package tour operators and local guides. When the goal of the trip is to dwell comfortably, safely, and knowledgeably in the destination place, then a certain amount of attention, study, or learning is required ahead of time; “homework.” Separating travel types and motives in this analytic way, the picture is unnaturally simple. In real life there may be a mixing of “getting away” and “getting into” the travel destination.
Refining this essay question a little more carefully, “what results can one expect from purely leisure travel,” the matter can be reduced this way: in the best of all possible worlds, what is the maximum meaningfulness that can possibly come from a week or perhaps a month in a destination during which time the traveler has no need to engage in gainful employment and instead can indulge in watching the people and events that are in motion all around. In other words, how well can a traveler immerse herself or himself in the local meanings of the place and also hear the echoes of the past that linger in traces of words, faces, and structures today? This essay is aimed at a leisure traveler keen on language and culture. By contrast a birdwatcher, hiker, butterfly collector, or other outdoor nature enthusiast will glean meaning by other measures. Ditto for the definitions that make meaning for a sports fan. Meanwhile, for a foodie or live music aficionado, the terms will be different, again.
Having isolated the active ingredient to leisure travel as “meaningfulness,” the next question is about how well those meanings can be woven together online, virtually, and vicariously in movies and books. After all, if there is much of the destination that can be known before setting off, then it may well be that armchair travel will suffice and no carbon footprint (or secondarily, one derived from electricity to power subsequent online searching) needs to be left on the far shore at the destination. Even without the benefit of Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR), the old-fashioned way of forming a mental picture of the place by reading and viewing can go a long way to establishing a sense of being there; to knowing what is culturally loaded with meaning and what is not; and to having enough knowledge of major historical eras, persons, and events to place the things encountered in person on site into a larger frame. But still there is nothing quite like walking a place at one’s own stride, taking in the light and sound and smell and taste directly. The experience of a place from a distance in space or time is skeleton made up of the many bones in correct relationship to each other so that the overall shape can be understood. But without the in-person decisions, consequences, and expenditure of energy and effort to make sense of things, that skeleton lacks flesh and life and a voice of its own. So it is surely valuable to spend time and energy and money ahead of time, but this effort cannot take the place of the actual journey and experience of abiding in a place among the people and events there.
Dropping out of the sky one day without first doing the homework in advance means that vast amounts of cultural and historical and interpersonal significance remain invisible. By contrast, someone who dwells on the subject at great length is already a minor expert even before packing a suitcase for a first trip or a repeat visit there. Such a person is prepared to make sense readily of much that presents itself in the form of people, language, and non-verbal parts of the cultural landscape and the social arenas. Of course, there is a sliding scale of familiarity and unfamiliarity to leisure trips. Simply being a tourist in one’s own town by visiting some district seldom seen is much different than crossing a national border to a place where an unfamiliar language is spoken. So there is a correspondingly large or small amount to learn ahead of time for the destinations that are most foreign compared to ones that are mostly familiar.
Returning to the object of this essay — why travel and with what results, with special reference to solitary travel with a goal of gaining some degree of local knowledge of language and culture, the answer begins to emerge. The folk term “travel bug” is used to describe a person with a big appetite to go away from home to see new places, whether it is a short ride to a new county or it is an expedition of many weeks or months to a distant land. Naturally, to be “bitten by the travel bug” can vary a lot: some people run out of pages on their passport before the document expires, while others are content to do countless day-trips and weekend travels to explore every corner of the terrain surrounding their own home. But there are other leisure travelers who are reluctant to transport themselves far away and will only make the trip as a way to culminate a lifetime of study and interest.
So to the question of WHY travel on one’s own to foreign or domestic shores, in the case of culture/history seekers, the answer is that the panoramic sensory experience cannot be synthesized by reading and watching multimedia, or even by extended conversations with people who come from the location. Only by pacing out with one’s own legs the distances and routes between sights can one produce vivid memories to tie to the meanings discovered ahead of time in the course of looking forward to the trip. Furthermore, in the hours and days that the traveler is present at the longed for destination, there is an opportunity for dialogic conversation; interacting with people with local knowledge, sometimes with generational depth. And finally, at the close-up (forensic) level, the traveler can touch the ground or the walls, calculate dimensions and distances, and take-in the geographic realities (angle of light, temperature and humidity, sounds and smells) that seldom are conveyed in print or recordings. Taken all together, the on-site experiences combine with the “homework” prepared beforehand, to produce a lot of meaning for the curious visitor. Local residents will look at their everyday setting one way, but a well-informed visitor will look at their places and people and events in a different way; partly aware of local meaning, but also able to attach comparisons to other places and times that the observer knows. In other words, WHY travel can be summed up as fulfilling the traveler’s interest in a place and time; making meaning by drawing together the information learned by study with experiences gained first-hand from being present at the destination.
The other question in the title of this essay is about the RESULTS that come from a solitary travel experience spent as culture/history sojourner in a new place. At one extreme is a person with limited engagement with the local people (including language) and the places in and around the destination. Just looking out the window of hotel or taxi gives a limited perspective; a spectator’s experience. Impressions might be little more than confirmation of previous bias or imagination, or maybe there will now be more breadth and depth to anchor and perhaps correct those initial imaginings.
At the other extreme is a person with friends or relatives residing at the destination. Suppose that this person has made an effort to gain some degree of proficiency and independence in the local language and society. In contrast to the spectator experience, above, this person will have multiple engagements as participant; somebody who is an outsider but also a person who has a voice in the daily life going on around him or her. The result of one or more trips to a place that is engaging to this degree is likely to extend the person’s worldview and universe of meanings organically; to grow personally and naturally from the traveler’s native language and society and expand the resulting depth and breadth of the person’s aggregate capacity for shared humanity. Eventually, the foreign and the home ground could become equally comfortable and satisfying to a person well acquainted with both places.
By narrowing down the question of travel to just the solitary kind, and just the culture/history-related kind, it has been possible to outline the reasons why a person is motivated to journey to a new place: the panoramic sensory experience, the capstone or culmination to preparatory “homework,” and the authenticity of close-up touching the actual places studied. All these reasons make the subject fully real and expand the person’s collection of familiar places they can claim to know. As for the things that result from engaging in a new place at some length, one is the expanded universe of human meanings and events that adds on to one’s native place. Another is the competent local knowledge that one can claim; a practical skill if ever guiding other newcomers through the cultural landscape and social arenas. A third result is the comparative one: being able to regard one’s own place and people (and language) partly as an outsider might see it. This is the gift of new sight granted by one’s experience in the foreign place.
All in all, for this subset of all the kinds of leisure travel in the world in 2020, there are significant reasons why a person is attracted to new places and people. And there are worthwhile results that may come from those competencies gained, step by step and layer by layer, too. There really does seem to be no substitute for going to a place, being there, and interacting with others steeped in the local knowledge of the place and time. That is not to say that skipping the homework stage and just taking a tour of a place will produce the golden fruit described here. No, there is a large part of the cultural literacy, social fluency, and linguistic proficiency that can be built ahead of time — indeed, those early foundations can be added to on-site, too; indeed, all life-long. But without the capstone experience of participating and observing for one or more extended periods, one cannot truly claim the place as one’s own — a place where part of one’s life is lived out, organically extending from the other parts of one’s life in the native (home ground) place.
Reader’s may wonder if a couple weeks in country A or B, with repeats every few years, is worth the homework stage of digging into the culture, history, and language. Each person’s appetite and ambitions and purposes are different, but combining some “homework” with some time lived in the place or with its people is valuable no matter how deep or shallow the dive may turn out to be.
