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travel manifesto
long term solo travel - a manifesto for globetrotting bliss

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Chapters

• Intro
• Choosing a different way
• On the road
• Friends and people
• Back home
• Safety & frustrations
• Tourist vs. traveller
• Preconceptions & ethnocentricity
• Treading lightly
• Making a difference & sustainable travel
• Ethics and the environment
• An ongoing journey

To most, travel occurs in quick, frantic bursts and is seen as just another commodity you can purchase - an encapsulated, pre-planned experience you buy. These short periods slot into our ‘lifestyles’, which are often dominated by cycles of paying off debts, amassing belongings and fulfilling responsibilities. But does living in this way make us happy? Can travel expand the mind, reduce prejudices and really help us ‘find ourselves’ – or do such notions amount only to pretentious drivel? This article responds to ideas raised in Rolf Potts’s book ‘Vagabonding’.

Perhaps what we should be focusing on is increasing our personal choices, qualities and experiences rather than our possessions. Independent long-term travel is not the reserve of ‘other people’ or the wealthy, nor is it meant to be an escape from our lives; it should be a passion and challenge that encompasses the joys of uncertainty. It is about finding adventure in normal life, and normal life within adventure – and making a private choice within a society that traditionally rejects the idea of ‘haphazardly’ abandoning all to see the world. It is the best education we can get and can enrich our sense of creativity, awareness, sensitivity and independence…
 
“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”
- St. Augustine

CHOOSING A DIFFERENT WAY:
Rolf Potts cites the story of two Christian monks, Theodore and Lucius, who lived in the wastelands of Egypt 700 years ago. Though they wanted to see the world, they could not break their vows of contemplation. To cope, they would ‘mock’ their desire to travel by relegating it to the future. When the summer came, they said they would leave in the winter. When winter came, they said they would leave in the summer.

We haven’t taken vows, but still we often choose to root ourselves to our home, a career and obligations, using ‘the future’ to justify the present instead of living in the now. Henry David Thoreau considered how we spend the best part of our lives earning money just to enjoy a “questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it”. The time never seems right and by settling into our lives/careers/homes/routines, we get obsessed with domestic certainties, convincing ourselves that we are just a few years or purchases from real happiness…

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine"
- Caskie Stinnett

In a more contemporary example, Edward Norton’s character in ‘Fight Club’ talks of being ‘so close’ to a perfect wardrobe and apartment just after he lost it all in a fire. Popular anarchist thinking talks of how we spend the greater part of our lives doing whatever we can to get paid, instead of what we really want to do, trading our dreams for salaries and freedom to act for possessions. Accumulating ‘stuff’ holds us down, which is a significant reason why so many long-term backpackers are in their 20s. It is whilst travelling that one is forced to face fears now instead of postponing or evading them for the sake of convenience. Life is short and no-one on their death bed will be lamenting over not making more money or working harder. It is more likely our regrets will be not seeing more of the world, relating more to the world or not spending more time with loved ones. Acting to thwart any future prospect of regret is a good motivational attitude to adopt, but living in the moment is even more important…

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour… Explore. Dream. Discover."
- Mark Twain

Envisioning a world “full of rucksack wanderers”, Jack Kerouac wrote of the joy of living with people who ignore “the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming all that crap they didn’t really want… all of it impersonal in a system of work, produce, consume”. Jan, in the German movie ‘The Edukators’, talks about Westerners being ‘sedated’ with game shows, technology and shopping. In other words, as travel to places like Africa and India can show, financial wealth does not necessarily make you rich. Whilst these places may be financially impoverished, their people are richer in community, culture and religion than many people in Western societies...

“Whoever loves money never has money enough”
- Ancient Hebrew scripture

The sense of freedom travel provides can be more fulfilling but is it not, however, for everyone – and one should not feel obliged to travel, or do so for fashion, to gain a moral high ground or as some kind of rebellious social gesture. Long term solo travelling requires and entails significant sacrifices, uncertainties and adaptations. It is a personal act requiring only a realignment of the self – those who embrace this are set to gain the most. A positive attitude along, with a willingness to grow and maintain one’s positive outlook beyond periods of travel, will pay dividends on and off the road.

ON THE ROAD:
So how does travel help us find adventure in normality? Daily details such as ordering food, listening to the radio, taking a bus, the smell of a city and finding your way around suddenly become exciting, rich and exotic adventures. Travel produces an overwhelming density of experience - one may be excited, bored, confused, desperate and amazed all in one day. Life is simpler yet at the same time more complicated, by knowing less we see more – our senses are heightened to an almost childlike degree, as highlighted by travel writer Bryson…

“…You are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you only have the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”
– Bill Bryson

“Travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simply, with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance.”
– Pico Iyer, ‘Why We Travel’.

This invigorating and simple way of living can be sustainable – it can spill over to trigger deep and permanent change in the rest of our lives.

FRIENDS & PEOPLE:
There is no baggage on the road other than your backpack, no pre-conceptions or pre-judgements, everyone is a stranger and you are a stranger to everyone – you have no history so in a way, you can be whoever you want to be.

"What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road"
- William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

Suddenly you have a clean slate and there is no better chance to dump bad habits, face old fears and test out repressed facets of your personality. Why is this? Stripped of the routines and possessions that give your life definition at home, you have to look for meaning internally. It is a cliché that travel can help you ‘find yourself’, but no matter where you’re visiting, there are few rehearsed responses or comforts to hide behind and you are forced to confront, recover and discover parts of your raw, true self. And since one is laid bare, free from all distractions, emotions are magnified, life is intensified and it is easier to achieve a ‘clarity of thought’. This alone helps us to give meaningful consideration to everything from small problems back home to one’s very existence…

“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter”
– John Muir, 1888, in a letter to his wife.

Perhaps Muir is being a little severe as there are pros and cons to travelling with friends, a partner or alone. Backpacking with others gives you a team dynamic and a chance to share the challenges, triumphs (and costs!) as well as the inevitable anxieties. Solo travel, however, enables you to immerse yourself in the environment and provides total independence and an opportunity to meet new people. And should one tire of travelling alone, it is easy to link up with like-minded backpackers on the road from all over the world.

An ideal way to enjoy the best of both worlds would be to travel with a friend and agree to have periods apart to venture off alone. One should perhaps be wary of remaining in a ‘bubble’ of friends for too long as doing so can distort and inhibit the enjoyment and understanding of a place…

“Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with travelled bodies, but untravelled minds.”
– Charles Caleb Colton.

Then again, one should remain open-minded as it can be a fascinating experience learning, for instance, about Chile, whilst backpacking in Prague. You may make lasting friendships which could even lead to an opportunity to visit your likeminded friend’s country, and vice-versa.

BACK HOME:
For many travellers, occasional periods at home provide an opportunity to see family and old friends and straighten out finances or earn some money. The more one travels, the more home feels like a foreign country rather than the other way round – and then the travel bug may also come to haunt you as you discover how little has changed.

Most friends and family will express enthusiasm for your travels, some may seem surprisingly uninterested in your adventures and others may even see it as a subtle criticism of their own way of life. ‘Gallivanting’ around the world may be interpreted as a selfish existence, but solo long term travel is not an ideology but a personal experience – and isn’t everyone else in pursuit of happiness in differing ways?

“Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbours depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else.”
– Bertrand Russell, ‘The Conquest of Happiness’.

Russell is highlighting how personal investment is more important than material investment, despite what we’re conditioned to believe. Keeping up with the Joneses feels may feel almost obligatory, but is ultimately unfulfilling. Major depression is the most common psychological disorder in the Western world and it has increased 10-fold since 1945, alongside the increases in economic wealth and stability. Our society values materialism and individualism (though we show a level of conformity as consumers); emotionally we have, in essence, developed into a selfish society. The statistics show that the root cause of most depression is not a sudden chemical imbalance because human genes do not change that fast. So perhaps the system isn’t making us happy and consumption isn’t the answer, maybe we need to consider a different path?

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