on travel
quick reference for insights picked up on the road
I have come to see travel as both an art and a science. It is more than just going somewhere different than where you live, but depending on the reasons that you are travelling: unlocking the mystery of going off the beaten path, balancing structure and spontaneity, learning new ways to do what used to be monotonous, and much much more. I recently came across the book Vagabonding by Rolf Potts that completely changed how I think about travel. Through the ideas from this book, as well as my experience putting these ideas into practice, I have come across ideas that I want to make sure I do not forget about travel. This is a quick collection of those ideas and practices. I’m hopeful this will help me grows in a few of the ways I had mentioned in this post: What am I chasing now?
To experience the world
Make friends around the world
Learn what makes people happy
Travel Tips and Practices
Getting Started
You start vagabonding long before you get a boarding pass, it’s when you start dreaming
If you are really feeling a longing for travel, then fear not. Even if you cannot immediately board a plane, you can start your planning. Vagabonding, as Rolf describes it, is not merely a ritual of getting immunizations and packing suitcases. It is the ongoing practice of looking and learning, of facing fears and altering habits, of cultivating a new fascination with people and places. This attitude is not something you can pick up at the airport counter with your boarding pass; it’s a process that starts at home. It’s a process by which you first test the waters that will pull you to wonderful new places.
“Vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility.”
Do not worry too much about choosing the right destination
This was one of the most unintuitive pieces of advice I got from the book. I always thought the most important choice to be made when travelling was choosing where to go. After all you are limited by what opportunities are offered by where you are. But Rolf Potts says that in every adventure the best parts were always unexpected wonders there was no way to know a place had until you went there. So even if you want to go somewhere on a whim, because you read a book whose story was set there, or even if you just find the name funny, you should do it. Do not let the choice paralysis of choosing where to go get in the way of just booking the flight and going.
“The reason vagabonding is so addictive is that, joyfully, you’ll never quite find what you dreamed. Indeed, the most vivid travel experiences usually find you by accident, and the qualities that will make you fall in love with a place are rarely the features that took you there.”
Balance preparation with spontaneity
When I did short term travel, I had every day planned. This left little room for the spontaneity and unexpected adventures I was most excited about traveling. After all, one of the reasons I traveled was to experience new things I could not have planned or expected. When I did long term travel, I did not plan at all. I did love walking around, but it alone did get old after a while. I realized that even in planning, there are ways to find the same old same old and ways to just explore and understand what new possibilities were around. Many exciting things such as a buddhist meditation, a sumo wrestling match, or even just knowing that you were near a famous park required making plans ahead of time. Therefore, if I had to sacrifice a day of vagabonding to plan the next week of vagabonding it was usually worth it.
The key to preparation is to strike a balance between knowing what’s out there and being optimistically ignorant. The gift of the information age, after all, is knowing your options—not your destiny—and those who plan their travels with the idea of eliminating all uncertainty and unpredictability are missing out on the whole point of leaving home in the first place.
On the Road
Take a second look
I talked a lot about the idea of how being still allows you to pay you more attention in this piece: Think Like A Cloud, so I won’t expand too much on this idea here. I will say, however, that it never ceases to amaze me how I will go through a street a dozen times, and only on my next walk through when I am actually focused on paying attention to where I am walking I see a small detail that brings out how unique the place I am actually is: ninja stars in a night market, giant statues of buddha in a window, healthy quick and cheap breakfast in a convenience store.
“Our eyes find it easier on a given occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon the divergence and novelty of an impression,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche. […] Nevertheless, it’s important, even on a personal level, to not just look at things as we travel but to see things for what they are.”
It helps to have a guide
Finding a friend or friend of friend when going to a new place can be a huge blessing. It can help you find amazing experiences hard to find online as well as meet people who can tell you about the mindset, culture, and ways of life of people living there. One of the most fascinating aspects of travel for me has been realizing how relative familiarity is. At home, only a dear friend you know for years may be considered familiar, but abroad even a friend from a friend, someone from your country, or even someone who speaks a broken version of your language can immediately become a new best friend.
When you go somewhere new bring your interests with you
When I first started travelling, often with my family, the goal was always to see what the most unique seeming attraction was in a foreign country. After all, this is a rare opportunity to act outside of my usual interests and experiences. This has definitely led to great experiences, but I have been surprised to find how rewarding it is to actually bring your interests with you when you travel. I personally am a huge foodie, love TV shows and music, and I love to dance. Booking a dance class, showing up for a meet-up, or even just going to a nearby dessert shop could be seen broadly as activities I can do at home as opposed to seeing Big Ben or the Fushimi Inari Shrine (famous for the vermillion gates) which I will never see at home. But following my interests can be a better way to meet locals and connect with them on common interests, discover a new side to your interests, and unpredictably lead to different experiences off the beaten path.
Should you want to catch up on some reading, feel free to string up a hammock and plow your way through a stack of books. Should you have hobbies—cooking, painting, music, meditation—you might take this time to deepen and diversify such interests within an exotic new context. Should you feel more social, you might choose to wander through your adopted hometown and figure out the inner workings of the place:
All travel is not created equally, mix and match the different styles
When I was working, travel was mostly secluded to family trips around 1 to 2 weeks long. Now that I’m considering completely new paths forward like freelike, part-time, or remote work, completely new modes of travel have become possible: solo vs with others, short term vs long term, spending all my time in one place (a staycation) vs moving around more. To mix and match these and experience what they each have to offer can be helpful to understand what mode of travel is best for you. In Vagabonding Rolf Potts recommends mixing it up, but that solo travel that is long-term is the best one.
All of my ensuing vagabonding journeys, however, have been solo—which I’ve found is a great way to immerse myself in my surroundings. Without a partner, I have complete independence, which inspires me to meet people and find experiences that I normally wouldn’t have sought. Plus, going solo is never a strict modus operandi for me: whenever I tire of solitude, it’s always easy to hook up with other travelers for a few days or weeks as I go.