As far back as I can remember, I have been compelled to travel. I do not know where or when this started – I have theories – but by my teenage years, this restless urge settled into axiomatic dogma. Uncritically, I assumed if you did not like/want/constantly feel the need to travel, there was something wrong with you – obviously.
And so, I took every and any excuse to explore. Over the years, I have crisscrossed Europe, eaten street food in Tokyo, bummed around Thailand, traversed South America, and rambled through Morocco, often alone. I was invited to the weekly Friday beheading in Saudi (RSVP: respectfully decline) on the same day I boarded a yacht on the Red Sea. I remember Damascus before the bloodshed.
To afford the unaffordable, I became adept at credit card sign-up bonuses and points and miles hacks. Finally, I was flying international first class on Asian carriers. I was staying at some of the world’s best hotels, the same hotels I longingly looked upon just a few years prior.
That led to this year. In 2016, I found myself in Portugal, Lake Como, San Sebastian, Bordeaux, Cap-Ferret, and (for the sixth time) Paris. Each an incredibly journey, and, yet, for the first time ever, I felt discontent. A bit of the magic that travel had always held had faded. It began to feel too touristic, and a tad bit manic.
As I traveled more, and more luxuriously, a strange alchemy diminished the sum of the parts. Spontaneity and adventure, cheap money-wise, became ironically difficult to experience staying in a five star property. I became sensitive, in a way I had never been before, to the endless lines, the traffic, the obsessive compulsive review of points and miles blogs – a death by thousands of logistical paper cuts.
I would be okay, I began to think romantically, in a barge sailing across the sea, working hard, eating poorly, breathing in the salty breeze daily. I would like to take a month or so, I fantasized as I cruised (relatively speaking) through TSA Pre, to work the rural French countryside in exchange for lodging and the chance to practice français.
But I still eye the Maldives – a private hut on a turquoise sea. And you better believe I will get there in a fully lie-flat seat, saver award, paying little more than a de minimis fee.
But, let me ask you this, what was I to see my sixth time in Paris? What compelled me to go? What would you do there after dutifully completing – at least once, but maybe twice or thrice – the top twenty recommendations of Fodor’s and Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor?
Why did I travel?
For some, it is all fresh, shiny and new. Adventure is easy if its your first trip to the Continent or you’ve never cliff-dived into a Lebanese lagoon. But for a more experienced peripatetic, that ceases to suffice. Traveling to see and photograph – that’s easy. But when you’ve seen enough of the world, traveling becomes solely about the experience, which begs the question: how much of what?
Why do I travel?
I have come to believe a deep, restless discontent motivates me. Seeing the new, experiencing the strange, interacting with the foreign – especially the uncomfortable, frustrating parts – force an immediacy of action and immersion in the present. I am changed by it, I grow because of it.
The moment my travels began to feel routine, tidy, conventional, something inside me responded. No, not this, it said, don’t let life’s ever-escalating indecencies and complications take away the only thing you’ve never really questioned. Do not let them take from you the thrill of the open road.
There are many places I have yet to go. Perhaps unrealistically, I want to be as enthusiastic to experience them as the first time I boarded a transatlantic flight, naively anticipating their novelty. I want to be excited because they will remind me of something old about this world or myself that I had almost forgotten. Returning to step foot again on home soil, I want to be able to answer the following question: how am I different today than the day I left?
Because I will change. I will grow, which is the flip slide of that discontent. And, the fun part, is I have no idea how I will change, what those experiences will do to me.
That is, really, what makes me curious.
