Why We Travel

Travel Stories: In a classic essay, Pico Iyer explores the reasons we leave our beliefs and certainties at home to see the world with open eyes

04.27.09 | 11:47 AM ET

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We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. The beauty of this whole process was best described, perhaps, before people even took to frequent flying, by George Santayana in his lapidary essay, “The Philosophy of Travel.” We “need sometimes,” the Harvard philosopher wrote, “to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

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I like that stress on work, since never more than on the road are we shown how proportional our blessings are to the difficulty that precedes them; and I like the stress on a holiday that’s “moral” since we fall into our ethical habits as easily as into our beds at night. Few of us ever forget the connection between “travel” and “travail,” and I know that I travel in large part in search of hardship—both my own, which I want to feel, and others’, which I need to see. Travel in that sense guides us toward a better balance of wisdom and compassion—of seeing the world clearly, and yet feeling it truly. For seeing without feeling can obviously be uncaring; while feeling without seeing can be blind.

Yet for me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle. In that regard, even a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet (in Beijing) or a scratchy revival showing of “Wild Orchids” (on the Champs-Elysees) can be both novelty and revelation: In China, after all, people will pay a whole week’s wages to eat with Colonel Sanders, and in Paris, Mickey Rourke is regarded as the greatest actor since Jerry Lewis.

If a Mongolian restaurant seems exotic to us in Evanston, Ill., it only follows that a McDonald’s would seem equally exotic in Ulan Bator—or, at least, equally far from everything expected. Though it’s fashionable nowadays to draw a distinction between the “tourist” and the “traveler,” perhaps the real distinction lies between those who leave their assumptions at home, and those who don’t: Among those who don’t, a tourist is just someone who complains, “Nothing here is the way it is at home,” while a traveler is one who grumbles, “Everything here is the same as it is in Cairo—or Cuzco or Kathmandu.” It’s all very much the same.

But for the rest of us, the sovereign freedom of traveling comes from the fact that it whirls you around and turns you upside down, and stands everything you took for granted on its head. If a diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism), a passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism). And the first lesson we learn on the road, whether we like it or not, is how provisional and provincial are the things we imagine to be universal. When you go to North Korea, for example, you really do feel as if you’ve landed on a different planet—and the North Koreans doubtless feel that they’re being visited by an extra-terrestrial, too (or else they simply assume that you, as they do, receive orders every morning from the Central Committee on what clothes to wear and what route to use when walking to work, and you, as they do, have loudspeakers in your bedroom broadcasting propaganda every morning at dawn, and you, as they do, have your radios fixed so as to receive only a single channel).

We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home. And we travel to fill in the gaps left by tomorrow’s headlines: When you drive down the streets of Port-au-Prince, for example, where there is almost no paving and women relieve themselves next to mountains of trash, your notions of the internet and a “one world order” grow usefully revised. Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology.

And in the process, we also get saved from abstraction ourselves, and come to see how much we can bring to the places we visit, and how much we can become a kind of carrier pigeon—an anti-Federal Express, if you like—in transporting back and forth what every culture needs. I find that I always take Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto, and bring woven ikebana baskets back to California; I invariably travel to Cuba with a suitcase piled high with bottles of Tylenol and bars of soap, and come back with one piled high with salsa tapes, and hopes, and letters to long-lost brothers.

But more significantly, we carry values and beliefs and news to the places we go, and in many parts of the world, we become walking video screens and living newspapers, the only channels that can take people out of the censored limits of their homelands. In closed or impoverished places, like Pagan or Lhasa or Havana, we are the eyes and ears of the people we meet, their only contact with the world outside and, very often, the closest, quite literally, they will ever come to Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton. Not the least of the challenges of travel, therefore, is learning how to import—and export—dreams with tenderness.

By now all of us have heard (too often) the old Proust line about how the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes. Yet one of the subtler beauties of travel is that it enables you to bring new eyes to the people you encounter. Thus even as holidays help you appreciate your own home more—not least by seeing it through a distant admirer’s eyes—they help you bring newly appreciative—distant—eyes to the places you visit. You can teach them what they have to celebrate as much as you celebrate what they have to teach. This, I think, is how tourism, which so obviously destroys cultures, can also resuscitate or revive them, how it has created new “traditional” dances in Bali, and caused craftsmen in India to pay new attention to their works. If the first thing we can bring the Cubans is a real and balanced sense of what contemporary America is like, the second—and perhaps more important—thing we can bring them is a fresh and renewed sense of how special are the warmth and beauty of their country, for those who can compare it with other places around the globe.

Thus travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty. For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitably travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we’d otherwise seldom have cause to visit.

On the most basic level, when I’m in Thailand, though a teetotaler who usually goes to bed at 9 p.m., I stay up till dawn in the local bars; and in Tibet, though not a real Buddhist, I spend days on end in temples, listening to the chants of sutras. I go to Iceland to visit the lunar spaces within me, and, in the uncanny quietude and emptiness of that vast and treeless world, to tap parts of myself generally obscured by chatter and routine.

We travel, then, in search of both self and anonymity—and, of course, in finding the one we apprehend the other. Abroad, we are wonderfully free of caste and job and standing; we are, as Hazlitt puts it, just the “gentlemen in the parlour,” and people cannot put a name or tag to us. And precisely because we are clarified in this way, and freed of inessential labels, we have the opportunity to come into contact with more essential parts of ourselves (which may begin to explain why we may feel most alive when far from home).

Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past or future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to interpretation. We even may become mysterious—to others, at first, and sometimes to ourselves—and, as no less a dignitary than Oliver Cromwell once noted, “A man never goes so far as when he doesn’t know where he is going.”

There are, of course, great dangers to this, as to every kind of freedom, but the great promise of it is that, traveling, we are born again, and able to return at moments to a younger and a more open kind of self. Traveling is a way to reverse time, to a small extent, and make a day last a year—or at least 45 hours—and traveling is an easy way of surrounding ourselves, as in childhood, with what we cannot understand. Language facilitates this cracking open, for when we go to France, we often migrate to French, and the more childlike self, simple and polite, that speaking a foreign language educes. Even when I’m not speaking pidgin English in Hanoi, I’m simplified in a positive way, and concerned not with expressing myself, but simply making sense.

So travel, for many of us, is a quest for not just the unknown, but the unknowing; I, at least, travel in search of an innocent eye that can return me to a more innocent self. I tend to believe more abroad than I do at home (which, though treacherous again, can at least help me to extend my vision), and I tend to be more easily excited abroad, and even kinder. And since no one I meet can “place” me—no one can fix me in my resume—I can remake myself for better, as well as, of course, for worse (if travel is notoriously a cradle for false identities, it can also, at its best, be a crucible for truer ones). In this way, travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simply (even when staying in a luxury hotel), with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance.

This is what Camus meant when he said that “what gives value to travel is fear”—disruption, in other words, (or emancipation) from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide. And that is why many of us travel not in search of answers, but of better questions. I, like many people, tend to ask questions of the places I visit, and relish most the ones that ask the most searching questions back of me: In Paraguay, for example, where one car in every two is stolen, and two-thirds of the goods on sale are smuggled, I have to rethink my every Californian assumption. And in Thailand, where many young women give up their bodies in order to protect their families—to become better Buddhists—I have to question my own too-ready judgments. “The ideal travel book,” Christopher Isherwood once said, “should be perhaps a little like a crime story in which you’re in search of something.” And it’s the best kind of something, I would add, if it’s one that you can never quite find.

I remember, in fact, after my first trips to Southeast Asia, more than a decade ago, how I would come back to my apartment in New York, and lie in my bed, kept up by something more than jet lag, playing back, in my memory, over and over, all that I had experienced, and paging wistfully though my photographs and reading and re-reading my diaries, as if to extract some mystery from them. Anyone witnessing this strange scene would have drawn the right conclusion: I was in love.

For if every true love affair can feel like a journey to a foreign country, where you can’t quite speak the language, and you don’t know where you’re going, and you’re pulled ever deeper into the inviting darkness, every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where you’re left puzzling over who you are and whom you’ve fallen in love with. All the great travel books are love stories, by some reckoning—from the Odyssey and the Aeneid to the Divine Comedy and the New Testament—and all good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.

And what this metaphor also brings home to us is that all travel is a two-way transaction, as we too easily forget, and if warfare is one model of the meeting of nations, romance is another. For what we all too often ignore when we go abroad is that we are objects of scrutiny as much as the people we scrutinize, and we are being consumed by the cultures we consume, as much on the road as when we are at home. At the very least, we are objects of speculation (and even desire) who can seem as exotic to the people around us as they do to us.

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Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer is the author of several books about his travels, including Video Night in Kathmandu, "The Lady and the Monk," "The Global Soul" and "Sun After Dark." His most recent travel book, The Open Road, describes 33 years of talks and adventures with the 14th Dalai Lama.


23 Comments for Why We Travel

PeggyCoonley/SerendipityTraveler 04.27.09 | 10:49 PM ET

Thanks for reposting this stellar travel essay by Pico Iyer . May we continue to travel the landscapes
and hidden gems of our heart bringing with us peace, and leaving love as our footprint.

Vera Marie Badertscher 04.28.09 | 3:39 PM ET

Such a beautiful paean to the urge to travel. Thank you.

Bobby 04.29.09 | 2:21 PM ET

I enjoyed your insightful article. It inspires me to write myself, perhaps more so to travel and experience this beautiful world through my own lenses both via canon and the optic nerve….

Tim Patterson 04.30.09 | 11:53 AM ET

I love this essay so much.  It’s a staple for some Where There Be Dragons student travel programs - instructors read the essay to students at the start of the trip.

Thanks for republishing and congrats on the anniversary - here’s to 80 more years of World Hum.

Roger 04.30.09 | 1:14 PM ET

This essay is a masterpiece.

Carlo Alcos 04.30.09 | 8:55 PM ET

Happy 8th birthday! This is my first read of this essay - it blew my mind. It’s everything I know in my heart but can’t come close to expressing. Thanks!

unstranger 05.01.09 | 5:01 AM ET

Intelligently written and so insightful.

Travelanthropist 05.01.09 | 11:28 AM ET

This is such a wonderful essay on the inner journey, discovery, open-mindness—all bundle up in an activity we can do call travel.

Edna Hickey 05.08.09 | 8:14 AM ET

Wow!!  Every place I have ever been i.e. Kalalau Trail in the darkness, Bryon Glacier (off the trail), driving on the Seven Mile Bridge, just woke up!!  Thanks for taking me there again.  I’m excited to read more and will share this journey with others!!

shakester 05.08.09 | 12:20 PM ET

thanks for resposting for those of us unlucky enough to have not read this before. Absolutely wonderful, at almost 1am, reading this in near silence, and feeling both excitement and calm within.

here’s to many more years!

pax 05.27.09 | 1:21 PM ET

this made my day.
thank you for reposting it. I definitely have to look for other of Pico Iyer’s writings.

Danielle 06.17.09 | 12:09 AM ET

I am so happy I have found this essay.  Iyer has reassured and aided me on a clearer journey to express my experiences from travel.  It is exciting to know there are others who find travel just as intoxicating as I do. Thank you.

Johnny B 10.07.09 | 4:05 PM ET

I travel because I need to be in touch with the dynamics of nature. Urban dwellers face an imminent risk of getting entangled in plastic life. A life that has come to define our unpleasant existence. Most of us can’t think beyond it. The laptops are babies and the internet is a pamper. Believe me, life is much more that that. Much more beautiful and mystical than what you could imagine at home.

I travel because it gives me a sense of freedom. A sense that is hard to come by in this utterly boorish urban landscape. I don’t mean to suggest that Karachi is boring. No, it’s not. It’s just that I don’t like it here any more. I want more of something new. The difference need be quantifiable in terms of pleasure bits and love bytes.

The exoticism of lands and of seas and of mountains is yet another charmer for me. But landscapes in isolation can be dreadful at times. They need animation. It is here that the best part of traveling comes in - the birds, the animals and the humans.

Johnny B
CEO, Halo Electronic Cigarette Company

Ryan 01.04.10 | 5:28 PM ET

Perfect.

James L. Moore 01.12.10 | 2:45 PM ET

Congratulations on your 8th anniversary!  And thank you for re-posting Iyer’s essay and re-minding all of us of why we travel.  Of why it is important to reach out beyond our own personal space, reach out beyond our borders, reach out beyond our cultural expectations.

Pico Iyer delves into the actual meaning of travel—- as getting outdoors can stave off ‘Nature deficit’, traveling can stave off ‘cultural deficit’.

Mary 08.11.10 | 12:33 PM ET

I can say that travelling is like getting into new reality, even if you travel to the same place it is always something new there. This essay inspires to expand new horizonts!

Kelly Harmon @hiptraveler 11.13.10 | 1:27 AM ET

intelligently written and infinitely relate-able by all travelers.

keep discovering! ~cheers, @hiptraveler

Nina 11.13.10 | 2:59 AM ET

I love this article By Pico Iyer. Thank you World Hum for republishing it. So beautifully written.

Heather Bosely 11.17.10 | 11:23 AM ET

Thank you for republishing this article!  What a joy to read and hear expressed so clearly the wonders of travel to be experienced by really seeing.

Boomergirl 11.22.10 | 12:03 PM ET

Made my Monday morning!

deepa gupta 11.29.10 | 8:44 AM ET

profound writing,immensely strong and impressive-your beginning of this article is truly deadly.thanks for sharing this .

Raghuvir 12.04.10 | 6:31 AM ET

Loved this article. Hope you republish more of such articles.

WhiteApple 12.22.10 | 9:10 AM ET

I’ve watched a big amount of videos on the issue on this site http://www.tubesfan.com and got my own vision of the philosophy of travelling. Well, if a person is too fond of travelling, in my humble opinion it means that they are infantile, this is a direct evidence of the immaturity of thinking, selfishness, irresponsibility if you wish, though in the best meaning of those qualities.)) Most people travel to escape their daily lives. Unfortunately, when they come back to reality, their problems, family, friends, and issues they face are still there. Travel to enjoy it, meet new people, get rid of your baggage, learn about culture and history, and enjoy yourself.

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