Why we travel

That's funny because I had the same feeling originally about there being no normal. But, when I traveled more, I came to a completely different conclusion. Maybe you will too?

I've travelled extensively over the last decade before settling down about a year ago - I spent time in Europe (west and east), Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Subsaharan Africa, the Amazon and North America. What I find fascinating is that you can figuratively draw sets of what each culture cares about. The intersection is, more-or-less, what it means to be human.

Obviously you need a significantly large sample size, but broadly speaking everyone wants somewhere comfortable to sleep and family and trusted, non-familial companions. Everyone wants what they consider to be good food (although the definition of 'good' changes somewhat). Everyone wants to look after their kids and have some sort of ritual to pass on knowledge culture and usually possessions to their offspring. Most cultures have music and dancing of some sort - both participatory and as entertainment. Every culture wants what it considers impressive to be considered impressive by outsiders. Every culture I've seen is more open to outsiders when they smile - I've learned to smile, to use body language and to relax more in unfamiliar surroundings.

Once I started to see these commonalities, I realised what's unique about my own culture - I started to understand myself better, and see myself more in relation to the society in which I was embedded. I became kinder, and more understanding of people seeming stupid or ill-educated; I became less tolerant of people behaving aggressively or using status-hierarchies to dominate others. And, like you, I became more creative and outgoing. I suggest keeping a diary of your attitudes, if you can. Travel diaries are very cool :-)

I don't know what is better about traveling (specifically the leisurely kind) - is it that there is some kind of comfort in escaping your daily life or is it the new experiences you find in a new place with new people?

I know someone who goes from Singapore to Germany every year for pleasure. He has done it for the past 8 years. It's his "favorite" destination. I guess for someone like him absolute "newness" is less important but "escape" is more important.

For others who live by the count of number of cities/countries/continents they have "covered" traveling seems to be a mission in itself. They travel for "newness".

I would say that a common answer to the "why" might be that we all like to escape our lives at some point or the other. Traveling provides that along with entertainment.

It's pretty straight forward - you most likely won't see them again, so you feel free to burn bridges.

You can burn some bridges where you live too, but then you'd have to deal with the consequences :)

ps. This is why alcohol is so popular - it all of a sudden 'doesn't count' because it wasn't me, I was drunk :) How convenient

I didn't take the end as "just a collection of destinations", but rather a selection of vignettes illustrating the various reasons one might travel to a particular destination. There are a multitude of reasons one might travel, and the author's pointing out some good ones, along with a personal reflection on that. The sections on the beach and the pumping station particularly spoke to me; the former because I'd previously seen a beach vacation as an indulgent waste of time (but have since come around), and the latter because, though it seems almost like a platitude, not enough people encourage others to make a trip planned around what they find particularly interesting.

To your latter point, I'd say that a lot of the time people embark on travel for the "wrong" reasons (some of which you mention, like boredom, social pressure, etc.) but end up discovering better reasons along the way (those illustrated in the destinations section). I think there is a stroke of admonishment in the article--asking the reader "why" _they_ travel. Personally, the more I demand myself to travel with purpose (as I have), the less I end up traveling. And my trips have been a lot more fulfilling as a result. But it's a little ironic in that, it's taken a lot of traveling to get to that point.

Fair question. I don't travel a lot. I live 1.5 miles from the centre of a city of a million in the UK. We have been staying for a week at a time at various seasons just outside a small town (2,500 population) in a national park a few hundred miles away for the last two and a half decades. Green fields outside the door and a river with (last week) a couple of herons hunting.

So I travel for contrast and to the same locus for continuity and to observe changes. The sudden appearance of disinfectant mats at the start of the foot and mouth epidemic, the slow turnover of farm transport from green Land Rovers to quad-bikes, a new generation taking over some of the older houses (micro-breweries and food pubs). The rise of serious bicycle riding as a local sport.

The ecological impact is a very important question actually that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. Is there any way to travel currently while minimizing ecological impact?

After all, air travel causes a large percentage of greenhouse emissions.

Thank you for confirming that I'm not alone in my curiosity as to why people feel the need to travel at every opportunity.

As a recent college graduate, I've watched a disproportionate number of my peers (willing to say ~75+%) default to traveling as their #1 form of recreation if given the opportunity. I guess I understand the college years are a time for people to "find themselves" but I also cannot find a good, common "why" for this fetishized trend of excessive travel.

We have this wonderful world around us and I'm willing to bet that most people have not seen more than their hometown, its surroundings and maybe a few holiday spots. A large number do not have the means to travel, but if you exclude those a better question would be why not to travel? Even for the things you mentioned, why not do them at a place you have never been before? Are you not curious about the world? Do you not like to try new things?

Interesting. Were you raised by globetrotter parents, or is it a penchant that developed over the years?

Agreed. I also really enjoyed Status Anxiety. For those who want to condense the reading experience, here is a 2.5 hr documentary version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g.

I've been at the 100k-mile tier with US Airways (and now American Airlines, courtesy of the merger) the past two years in a row. Thankfully, this year I'm dropping down below that; I'll probably clock in around 60-70 thousand miles flown in 2015, depending on how much I do in the final quarter of the year.

On one hand, it's much more relaxing to not be constantly away from home and shuffling between hotels and airports. On the other hand, I'm going to miss the perks; might have to switch over to Delta for next year, since AA only provides free upgrades at the very top tier.

What do you do to overcome the toll it takes on your body?

Here, try this. I put it on my Google drive for you: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BymUSeJD4sLzTGdkaVVURkFab0k...

I agree with the principle of your comments but not with the wealth aspect. My experiences have told me that the world of traveling is restricted to those with the right passports, i.e., North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and a few other countries considered privileged. If your passport is from the wrong country, like mine, throughout your travels, you'll come across incredible barriers irrespective of how much money you have. You'll constantly be reminded that you don't "belong" in the club of travelers.

If you have travelled to enough different countries, (60 for me and counting), you will have several instances of being detained by immigration, yelled at by consular officers, beaten up by border guards, have your passport flung at your face by police, and several such adventures. The fact that you went to great lengths to get the right visa papers (which could involve filling lengthy forms divulging every aspect of your finances and your life till date and wait months for a decision granting you permission to visit a country for a week) doesn't count. The fact that you have a PhD from a US university doesn't count. The fact that you have a great job at a fortune 5 firm in silicon valley doesn't count. The fact that you make a high income and have a lot of savings doesn't count.

In fact these could count against you, because immigration / consular officers will think someone with your passport is obviously making it up. That you are just trying to sneak into the country to get an under the table job washing dishes. This happens even when the country you are trying to enter gets a massive amount of financial aid from your own country.

So it's not a rich vs poor aspect. Traveling is a type of large-scale consumption that re-affirms self-worth through having the right passport.

I keep seeing this attitude any time travel comes up on HN and I still have no idea where it comes from. The idea that travel is nothing more than banal consumption for the purpose of puffing up your Instagram account is absurd on the face of it.

Don't be silly. Hop a flight some day and you'll find no shortage of Plumber's Mates dirtbagging along on a few hundred bucks a month, picking up hostel desk & bartending jobs every few months to squirrel away some extra savings. Head down to Peru and you'll run in to gap year kids from Uraguay who are traveling around on their own savings. Uraguayan highschool job savings, which I hope we can stipulate doesn't fall in to the category of "wealth display"

You're thinking of "vacations", which are in fact expensive. Traveling in the fun parts of the developing world is really quite cheap.

What about people who travel cheaply. I went on a 3 week holiday last year (I work full time) and it cost me 1200 pounds. OK, I might have spent a couple hundred more to buy things like a backpack and boots since it was the first time in my life I went on a holiday (not counting holidays with my parents when I was a teenager) but I'm getting a lot of use out of them and plan to get even more.

That's not entirely true. Travel can be done on the cheap, many people don't even explore their own city. People who don't travel find a million excuses, but it usually boils down to fear of the unknown.