Boring Travel Essays
What’s The Point In Travel?
Or have I missed the boat?
Imagine this scenario.
It’s Friday evening. You’ve had a good week. You’re tired but satisfied. You’ve just been paid, the curry’s on its way, and you’re enjoying a nice cold beer.
What could possibly go wrong?
Suddenly gripped by the urge to make things even better, you suggest to your partner a trip to Rome next weekend.
‘We’ll take Friday off, fly out in the morning, and be in Rome by lunchtime.’
Your partner isn’t moved by the idea but agrees anyway, not wanting to deflate your enthusiasm.
The trip to Rome is a disaster. The hotel is terrible, the weather atrocious, and by the time you arrive back late on Sunday night, you’re sick to death of each other.
Sound familiar?
A few weeks ago, I had the desire to go to Beuvron-en-Auge, a pretty village not far from where I live. It’s like a lot of pretty villages in Normandy, except that David Hockney lives there.
Hence, it’s become moderately famous.
It was boring as hell.
What was I thinking? Did I expect David Hockney to greet me with a cigarette and a free painting lesson?
Of course not. The guy probably wasn't even there.
I should have stayed at home. The sun was out, and I had stuff I wanted to do in the garden.
Instead, I wasted a day wandering around a charming but ultimately bland village, spending my hard-earned cash on overpriced cuts of beef and exorbitantly priced bottles of rosé wine.
So why do we do it?
What’s this insane obsession with travel and sightseeing?
The Modern Traveller
Modern travel is a delusion.
Designed to make us feel good when all it does is empty our wallets. To make us forget that behind our newly acquired suntan, we’re simply another salary slave to some corporation or institution. Institutions that demand we show up bright and early on Monday morning after our two weeks in the sun.
The modern traveller goes nowhere.
We all end up in the same airports and branded hotels, and all drink the same bullshit Mojito on arrival. Then we go off to see the sights recommended by Trip Advisor. Or talk about pensions, stocks, and shares with our boring fellow travellers. Then we all go back home after a last minute dash to the Duty Free.
This isn’t travelling. It’s holidaying.
Sightseers
Not everyone stays in five-star resorts or flies business class, I agree. But most folk don’t travel these days either, we just sightsee. We’re tourists.
The real traveller strides out to foreign destinations on a quest for discovery. The tourist strides down to breakfast.
A close friend of mine boasts about how much he’s travelled, but when you dissect the reality, his travelling consists of a list of exotic locations seen from a cruise ship or a luxury air-conditioned bus.
Has he trekked through the Andes half-naked, ravaged by thirst, hunger, and disease?
No
Have I?
No.
Most of us haven’t travelled. I’ve done some offbeat cycling trips over the years in the UK and Europe, sleeping rough and making do. But I wouldn’t class it as travelling. I was still in Western Europe. If anything happened, I would have phoned an ambulance.
Saying that it was better than going to some pristine resort in the Maldives or some place with those cocktail-blue seas and colonial style restaurants where all the waiters still call you Sah!
End Game
I’m not knocking anyone’s lifestyle. You could go to the Moon for all I care — I heard it’s nice at this time of year.
But consider this.
Next time you get that urge to go away, perhaps you might want to remember how good things are at home. And that you might be perfectly content to stay on the sofa eating curry and drinking beer.
You might even enjoy it.
And give the planet a break as well.
But that’s another story.
Thanks for reading. For more rubbish
