We spend more on travel than on any other leisure activity. But Ash Bhardwaj believes that we can make travel more fulfilling by thinking about our motivations for doing it. He explores this in his book, Why We Travel, through a blend of travelogue, memoir, research, and advice.
Because of my work, people often ask me for travel recommendations. But as I wrote and researched Why We Travel, I realised that destinations are the wrong place to start our travel-plans, because different places suit different motivations at different times.
Travel-marketing focuses on hedonism (the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain), because that’s the reason that most of us travel, most of the time. But it means that we ignore much of what travel can do for us.
I’ve travelled in every guise from student to soldier, and each revealed something new to me about travel. By interviewing others about their travels, and researching the origins of our motivations, I found 12 main motivations for travel: Curiosity, Inspiration, Happiness, Mentorship, Serendipity, Hardship, Service, Empathy, Healing, Wonder, Eroticism and Hope.
In Why We Travel, I explore how we can use these motivations when planning a trip, and whilst we are on a trip. The goal is to make each journey more fulfilling, so here’s a few examples that you can use right away.
1. CURIOSITY
My first big overseas adventure was on a rugby tour to New Zealand. I was astonished by the landscape, but fascinated by the prominence of the country’s indigenous Māori culture. I wondered why this was so different to other British-colonised nations, and I began learning about New Zealand’s history. It lit a fire of curiosity that has motivated my travel ever since.
Curiosity is an innate human instinct, and it appears in travel in two forms. First there’s the big, cognitive questions about a place’s unique identity:
· How did history affect the place that I see today? How did landscape and climate affect the culture? What are the influences on music and cuisine?
Then there’s the small questions that we are usually too self-conscious to ask:
· Why are the fonts on road-signs different to ours? Why do they greet each other like that? Why are the buildings constructed in that way?
Big questions are useful when planning our travel. They provide a sense of purpose to our journeys, an itinerary to follow, activities to do, and questions to ask. Small questions keep us curious whilst we are travelling. We may never answer them, but they help us notice what’s different about a place, and give us the sense of being ‘elsewhere’.
2. SERENDIPITY
We all want to make the most of our time, so it’s tempting to create a packed itinerary. But some of my best travel memories come from things that I never knew existed: a festival in Sudan, which I heard about in a café; or a noodle-shop in Hokkaido, Japan, that a mountain guide recommended. When I was in Uganda, I noticed that all the young men were fans of a particular North London football club, so I asked them why; it gave me a window into their lives that I would have never otherwise had.
These accidental encounters, recommendations and insights are the essence of travel. We can only seize such opportunities when we have the freedom to do so, so leave plenty of time in your itinerary for serendipity.
3. HEALING
In 2012, I took my father’s ashes to the River Ganges in India. Whilst I’m not religious, it was a sort of pilgrimage, and it began an internal journey that helped me to resolve my relationship with him.
Pilgrimages are undertaken for both secular and religious reasons. Many people walk ancient pilgrimage routes (such as the Camino de Santiago in Spain and Portugal) because they are at transitory points in their lives, such as the aftermath of a break-up or bereavement. It gives them a chance to take time out of their lives, but with a sense of purpose.
Any route – such as a path up a mountain – can be a hike for one person, and a pilgrimage for someone else. What matters is our intention. By letting our thoughts move at the same speed as our boots, we can unconsciously rearrange the filing cabinet of our minds. That is always beneficial, even if we are just feeling a bit overwhelmed.
4. WONDER
We often travel to experience awesome things, like watching a solar eclipse in the desert, or tracking elephants through the savannah. Wonder is the mental state that allows us to experience awe, but we can use it to make the mundane feel awesome.
‘Psychogeography’ focuses on our emotional interaction with the environment, and we can access it by looking out for a particular colour – such as red or blue. I find that it pulls my eyeline away from street level, and into shopfronts or roof tops. Try paying attention to different sounds as you walk through a city. What languages can you hear being spoken? Do things sound different near a river? This helps us to experience places in a new way, and to notice a new texture in the places that we visit.
5. EROTICISM
The psychotherapist Esther Perel described ‘eroticism’ as the sense of aliveness that exists in the gap between oneself and the other. She used it when speaking about romance, but I think it gets to the heart of travel.
When we become over-familiar with something or someone, that sense of aliveness and surprise can diminish, so we need to work at it. If we keep returning to the same
destination, or repeating the same type of holiday, we can fall out of love with travel. We need to surprise ourselves.
This is where travelling with a partner can help. By letting each other take charge of a day’s itinerary (without feedback or complaint) we are forced out of our comfort zone. It allows us to each achieve what we want from travel, and we may discover something we never knew we liked. That’s good for our relationship with travel, and for our relationships with each other.
I explore seven further motivations in Why We Travel. You might only use some of them once or twice in your life, but if we start thinking about why we travel, we can start to do it better. And that can help us to live more fulfilling lives.
Why We Travel: A Journey into Human Motivation is published by Bedford Square, and is out on the 11th of April 2024. You can pre-order now here
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ash Bhardwaj is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and keynote speaker, whose work explores the intersection of travel, current affairs and human behaviour. He has reported from around the world for outlets including the BBC, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and Condé Nast Traveller.
Before travel writing, Ash was a ski instructor, science teacher and wannabe cowboy. He is an officer in the British Army Reserve, and a lecturer in travel journalism at City, University of London. Why We Travel is his first book.
Watch Ash introduce his new book: