Why Travel The World?
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There
is something just downright audacious and free about
traveling around the world with a rucksack on your back. Yet
thousands of people head out to travel independently in the Third
World, looking for excitement and adventure, and come home many
weeks later, never once having shouted "Wahoo!", or howled out
loud at the moon, or had a giggling fit in the middle of a packed
bus.
It's a part of travel that makes all the other hardships worthwhile: that sudden rush of excitement as you are riding in the back of truck full of Indians across the Bolivian Altiplano, when for no reason at all, you startle them all with a loud "Whoop!" You just realized how footloose and fancy-free you are -- how audacious your life as a traveler really is -- and you love it! No, you don't have to ride in the back of a truck to get the giddy feeling that you are doing something deliciously adventurous, thrilling, audacious, and amazing; it can happen every day.
If this sounds like a good enough reason to go traveling, then read on -- that's what this book is all about. I will be giving great long lists of what to take, and do, and not to do; and how to cure diarrhea, and wash your trousers, and take a bath out of a canteen. But what I really want to do is to help you feel confident and free enough to find your own "Wahoos!" They will surprise and startle you, but once you've had a few, you can never lose your yearning to become a vagabond again, and again. And if you forget how to "Wahoo!", then you might just as well stay home and go fishing, because traveling is not nearly so much fun without the magic of the vagabond spirit.
I never like myself as much as when I'm traveling. Maybe it's the independence and self-reliance, or maybe it's just the childish joy that bubbles out of me when I least expect it. It is something natural and guileless, in the midst of a hard and unrelenting lifestyle, that takes me ever by surprise: a feeling of wonder at the world.
It doesn't take years, or even months of travel to feel footloose and fancy-free, although a little experience helps. Anyone can do it with the right attitudes, because vagabondage is just a state of mind. Sometimes I can even lapse into it on quiet nights at home, sitting in the comfort of my own room and calling back memories of that traveler's life -- feeling the rumble of the engines, the call of the wind, the beat of the drums. In fact, now that I'm writing about it, it happens to me all the time!
Travel is an education; it is the classical Homeric odyssey of discovery -- discovery of the world and of yourself. It teaches through direct experience and gives you a global perspective on your life. It's exciting, one hell of a lot of fun, and it beats working!
Experience
Travel to get outside of yourself and your own culture, to see Life's myriad faces beyond the veil of your own existence, and to experience the human drama as you have never seen it before. Just to get out there and experience more of whatever Life has to offer up to you -- travel!
The lives of Third World peoples will no longer be just a fleeting, flickering image on your television screen -- you will know what their living conditions are like because you will have lived them yourself! You will see people living in conditions you could not have imagined, going about their daily lives in the midst of poverty, disease, and death. You may see death first-hand, perhaps for the first time in your life. You will see people who appear to have nothing, enjoying their lives. In fact, many of these people are well-fed, adequately clothed, and have work to support themselves. They only seem to have nothing, compared to the incredible wealth and plenty of our lives at home. You will have the time to reflect on these experiences, you will grow, and become a citizen of the world.
You will see through new eyes your own culture, your way of life, and yourself. You will see yourself challenged by new and unfamiliar situations. You may not like everything you see in yourself, but it will help you to better understand yourself, and to grow out of petty attitudes and finicky needs. You will learn patience!
Perspective
You will discover how relative our values really are. I am forever having my personal values challenged by meeting entire civilizations that hold contradictory values! It's amazing! How can I know a value to be true, while millions of others all agree that it is false? Frankly, I find it fascinating! Some people find it quite troubling.
If values are culturally relative, then how can we ever be sure that our own values are correct? Well, clearly we cannot, and that's what can be so troublesome. To accept that your own cultural values are not universally and intrinsically right is a difficult leap to make. It becomes more difficult to feel culturally superior; and I think that is a positive step.
You will not likely be faced with such reflective cultural insights when you take a guided tour for a week or two. Nor is it easy to immerse yourself in a culture in just a few weeks of traveling on your own. My perspective is from traveling for six to eighteen months at a stretch with nothing but a rucksack. Perhaps you can imagine that this is an experience of immersion into the cultures, values, lives, and feelings of ordinary people across the face of the Third World. You may not be as inclined or free to make journeys quite this long, but you can still escape the "vacation mentality", even on trips of a few weeks. This book will give you a glimpse into the traveler's world, and the information you need to plan, enjoy, and learn a great deal from your own individual experiences, at your own pace.
Excitement and Fun
It's not so important how many countries you visit, or how many snapshots you have to show for it. Some days, it can be enough just to feel the wind in your hair, the sun on your face, and to know that, for better or worse, you are happy to be alive, to really feel the life around and within you. Travel is about that, too.
Travel brings you closer to the natural elements. Like it or not, you will spend much of your time outdoors, sometimes sleeping in places that might as well be outdoors. When nature is cold, you will shiver, you will sweat in its heat, burn in its sunshine, and get soaked in its rains, just like everybody else. It takes a bit of getting used to, but you will come to feel uneasy about being cramped up inside of buildings again. Does that sound good?
Beats Working
You thought it was just an easy joke. But yes, day for day, month for month, traveling will give you approximately one zillion times the learning, experience, and fun of working. Well, now I am exaggerating. I actually enjoy working; in fact, when I travel, I get to miss the gratification of working with other people and creating things. Like most travelers, I spend more time working than I do traveling; the traveling just seems longer because it occupies so much more of my memories.
Two or three weeks out of every fifty-two just doesn't seem like nearly enough time to enjoy my favorite hobby. Even at three weeks per year, after forty years of working, you have had only two-and-a-third years you can call your own. Think about it. If you work in Europe, you probably get five or six weeks a year holiday, which is enough to take a pretty good little trip to someplace really interesting. Do it!
Should you suddenly find yourself without work for a while, consider taking the opportunity to "just take off", even for a few weeks. Get away from your old life and rediscover what the rest of the world has to offer, and how good you can feel about yourself in that world.
Backpack travelers travel on their own, or with a friend or two. They make all their own plans, itineraries, schedules, and travel arrangements. Once they arrive, they are on their own. Backpack traveling is cheap. You can buy all of your bus and train tickets, live in hotels, eat in cafes, and have some pretty good adventures for what it costs you just to make your rent or house payments at home.
There are any number of clever definitions to distinguish travelers from tourists. My own is that travelers carry their own towels, soap, and toilet paper, while tourists don't have to. Tourists get sick; travelers just get "the shits, but it's no big deal." Unlike tourists, travelers seldom make hotel reservations, or even know where they will be staying next. They use local hotels instead of tourist class hotels. They always carry their own bags - that's why they use backpacks - and they travel pretty light. Travelers prefer surface transport to flying whenever feasible. They usually take public transportation instead of private cars or taxis, and they do a lot of walking.
These habits are meant not only to save money, but to bring travelers closer to the level of the common people in the countries they visit. That's the idea, to get the feel of the everyday lives of ordinary people in the cultures you see. You will often have the option of traveling at whatever level of comfort you choose, and if you wish, you can alternate between tourist comfort and traveler's asceticism. Do it the way that feels best for you.
Can anybody do it?
Yes, and no. With a little planning, anyone with the physical ability to walk a few miles and carry their own gear can head out into the Third World and travel on their own, using only their own wits, and information from guide books and other travelers. You must have a bit of adventure in your blood, but you don't have to be 23 and willing to die young.
I am not going to tell you that you should hitchhike around the world. I am not going to tell you that you must stay in grotty lodgings, or live on as little money as possible. I am not going to tell you that in order to have a great experience you must head out alone for the most isolated and forbidding spots on the planet. If you want to do these things, I will help you. But I will also help you get the most benefit and excitement out of traveling in ways that, while considerably more conventional, will blow the minds of your friends back home!
I am also not going to tell you that traveling is easy. In some ways it really is the Easy Life; your time and your life are entirely your own, to do with as you please. But it can be a lot of work, too. People sometimes ask me, "What do you do out there for all that time?" I can never exactly remember all of the things that take up so much time and effort, so I guess that means that I love my work. Like any job, it takes some time to learn the ropes so that you can get the basic tasks done as efficiently as possible, and have the time and energy left to enjoy the best parts of it.
Almost anyone can travel, but not everyone enjoys it. The emotional and psychological stresses can be discomforting or intolerable to people who aren't prepared for them. Your environment changes constantly and you must make dozens of small decisions every day, without having all the information you need. You encounter many situations that you just don't understand, and you must deal with people who do not speak your language. There are plenty of misunderstandings, delays, and surprises. Just getting a meal can be an ordeal. Sometimes you have no idea what you have ordered, or what kind of village you will be staying in. You must sometimes deal with people who are trying to take advantage of you or steal from you. Occasionally you can feel lost and helpless.
If you have learned how to take care of yourself, take precautions, and adapt to the local conditions, and if you find pleasant companions to help share your ups and downs, you will get along fine even though you may start out feeling insecure. But not everyone is willing to put up with all the uncertainties and inconveniences of independent travel.
Escorted tours cater to people who like to have things planned out and arranged by someone else, those who appreciate the security of being escorted, or who are short on time and personal travel know-how, but would like to have a particular experience. You can find escorted tours for everything from taking the train to Istanbul, to bicycling the Gobi Desert. Yes, they do some pretty exciting things, including a few that most of us would never want to try on our own. They can be pricy, but if you find one that suits your needs, check it out!
Escorted tours are just a different kind of experience, because traveling in a group, with tight schedules, is not as conducive to getting acquainted with the culture on a one-to-one basis. This book is mainly about traveling on your own, with your own time schedule, footloose and fancy-free. But even those of you who prefer escorted tours will find plenty of useful information for planning and enjoying any trip.
Women Travelers
Yes, I meet many women traveling; in some places they outnumber
the men. Some women travel alone, others meet travel companions
along the way, while some travel with partners from home. There
are generally more hassles for women travelers than for men, and
just a few advantages. Here's an internet page of various
books on the subject of Women
Traveling.
Age
Yes, there are plenty of middle-aged and older people out there traveling around with rucksacks on their backs; you won't be alone. You don't have to worry too much about stamina because you can set your own schedules and your own pace. If you have managed to accumulate a little more money than you had in your student days, you may be able to afford more conveniences when you feel you really need them, or to take some special excursions that will be quite worthwhile. But do make an effort to hang out with the other travelers; they can be as interesting as you are, although you may have to make the first move to get acquainted with some of the younger people.
Most Third World cultures still maintain a great deal of respect for older people, and this usually carries over to travelers, no matter how scruffy you look. I still feel out of place walking into a posh first class hotel lobby -- waiting for a doorman to come over and say "You don't belong in here!" But now that I have a lot of gray hair, I usually get the benefit of the doubt; maybe I'm just some rich businessman on a hunting trip.
Handicapped Travelers
Unfortunately, the Third World is not at all well provided for
wheel-chairs, and even getting around on crutches can be an
ordeal. Handicapped people may be quite limited in the places
they can go, and the ways they can travel, but I can recommend
"Travel For the Disabled", by Helen Hecker, R.N.,
(1985; ISBN: 0933261004), and "Access
to the World" by Loise Weiss (1983; ISBN: 0871967871).
They are both resource books, telling you where to write in
various countries to get information on hotels, transportation,
and sights that are accessible to the handicapped, but are
pretty old now.
The best thing to come out yet for handicapped travelers is
"
The Real Guide, Able to Travel: True Stories by and for
People With Disabilities", by Alison Walsh (1994; ISBN:
1858281105) from The Rough Guides people. Over 600 pages cover the entire
world with detailed travel information and stories by and for
handicapped travelers.
Why is it so different to take a trip of three or six months, than several trips of three to six weeks? First of all, you will have the time to see larger areas of the world in greater depth. You will be able to compare and contrast several cultures that you have come to know well. And you will be able to hone your new travel skills, making your life easier as you go along.
Perhaps even more important, your frame of mind changes on a longer trip, because you are changing. Your travel life is so rich and full that it seems you've always been On the Road. After traveling for a long time, I can no longer relate to that other guy who sits in air-conditioned offices pounding out computer programs for months and years on end. He really is a different person, with different priorities, a different life. I do not relate to my everyday life in America, I relate to my everyday life on the Road.
Changes begin after the first weeks. You start to feel relaxed! You are just getting used to travel, to not going to work, to the lack of work stress, and getting over your fears of the unknown. I am always afraid when I start out on a new trip. After several years in mainstream America, it is very difficult to get started. I can only tell myself that I have done it before, and survived; I can do it again.
At some point in your travels, you realize that you are no longer the person who left home. You have different perspectives, different needs, and different attitudes. You have slowed down; you can now appreciate a few days of doing 'nothing special'. You have changed.
After just five or six weeks of good traveling, you will have amassed enough interesting experiences, stories, and emotional peaks to fill a whole year or two at home. While time sometimes seems to pass quickly (as in having fun), when you look back to past events from the same trip, it can seem so very long ago, because you have experienced so many unique and eventful days in between.
But somewhere around this time I become aware that something is changing, and I'm not sure that I like it. I seem to have lost touch with the reality of my home, my life, my feelings. I have been putting distance between myself and my former life. I'm not so sure of who I am anymore or what I'm doing out here. I realize that the Traveling Life is tougher than life at home, and not always fun. The novelty has worn off and the little annoyances begin to prickle. At some point, I consider going back home.
Since I've done this a number of times, I leave my long trips open-ended. I say, "Well, I'll just do Yucatan and Guatemala, then I'll rest up on the beach and see how I'm feeling." I plan for a nice restful hangout to relax and ponder the future. But I always choose to keep on traveling, and usually laugh that I should have doubted it. Now I'm a real traveler -- at home On the Road -- and I never look back.
Check
out Crossroads under
Glimpses of the
Road, back on Randy's Travel
Page.
What does it mean, to "travel like a vagabond"? Well, a "vagabond" is defined in my dictionary as: "a wanderer, without a fixed schedule or itinerary". Wow -- that sounds just about right to me! For me, to travel like a vagabond means this: When you don't like a place, you move on. When you do like it, you stay as long as you please. The same goes for people; if you don't like them, you never have to see them again; if you like them, just say so, and team up for a while. If your room gets too dirty, just change hotels!
It means that you are footloose and fancy-free. You can change your plans whenever you feel like it, skip one country, stay an extra month in another, or change directions to travel with a new-found friend. You are open to all of the possibilities and opportunities. You have no reason to say, "Gee, I'd really like to, but I have to keep moving, I have to meet my friend, I have to make my flight, I have to get to Timbuktu for the weevil festival." Your time is your own -- you and your travel partner, if you have one. Only you decide when to leave and where to go, and you can change your mind anytime you like. Sound good?
The main criterion for traveling like a vagabond is Time. If you don't have enough time, you can't take your time. But how much time is "enough"? I have seen any number of people traveling around the world on a one-year round-the-world (RTW) ticket, who just don't have enough time to see all the places, or do all the things they want to do, as leisurely as they would like to do them. Their problem is clear: they want to do everything, and they end up doing nothing as well as they would like. Even though they are traveling for a year, they cannot live footloose and fancy-free because they are too busy meeting the schedules they set for themselves before they left home!
They will have a fantastic experience, make no mistake about it. But they haven't been able to fully appreciate the people and cultures they are visiting. After a full year of traveling, they will still say, "I wish we could have stayed there longer," or "I would like to have gotten to know those people better; they invited us to stay with them, but we just didn't have the time."
The second criterion for traveling like a vagabond is to avoid placing time constraints on yourself. Schedules, fixed tickets, arranged meetings or mail drops, festivals you cannot miss -- all of these are time constraints that force you to be in a certain place at a certain time. Even if you must have a fixed return date, don't add a lot of intermediate deadlines for yourself; be flexible! Those one-year travelers made a schedule at the beginning of their trip, and they stuck to it. But that initial schedule dominated their trip, it dictated their movements, it drove them out when they wanted to stay, and it took away their freedom to travel like vagabonds.
If you want to save yourself some effort (i.e., cheat), then skip ahead for a minute and read the later section called "The Big One", which explains that the one main thing that you need in order to turn a mundane rushed vacation into a leisurely sojourn of vagabondage, is Time. That is the core of my message to you.
Why listen to me? That's a good question that you should be asking of anyone giving you advice. If you haven't yet visited my Travel Page, you might want to drop by there and see what else I have to offer, including a bunch of travel articles and traveler's tales. It will also lead you to my brief Travel Biography page, where I list my travel credentials. They include six years of backpack travel -- not working in London or Sydney for a year or two, but six years on the move with a rucksack in the Third World (though not all in one trip!). I also spent four years living in Japan, and three months in Venezuela, but those are different stories...
My Perspective
This is not a textbook, it is my book. I have a lot of good hard information to give you, and I have some personal impressions, insights, and even a little philosophy to breathe life into this portrait of the traveler's existence. I have tried to keep most of the storytelling confined to the sidebars, but it keeps escaping into the text. If nothing else, my occasional personal anecdotes illustrate that I have actually done what I have told you can be done, it's not just something I read somewhere in a brochure.
I also have plenty of attitudes and opinions about traveling and you are going to hear about them. You will see a lot of "personally"'s where I want you to know that I am expressing my own preferences and prejudices. I will also endeavor to present you with alternative ideas in the same context.
I expect you to make your own decisions about how you travel. I am going to show you how I travel, and as many different ways that other people travel as I can. It is important for you to travel the way that suits you best. It is important for you to travel the way that suits you best. (A little repitition keeps you from reading too fast.) One of the purposes of this book is help you to be independent enough to create your own trips, your own style, maybe even your own philosophy of travel.
I would be chagrinned if I thought you were all going to go out there and travel just like I do. When you question or disagree with my attitudes, good for you! Now you're thinking! Use my rules and ideas as a starting point to create -- and evolve in the course of your travels -- your own set of rules, your own value system for how you travel. Then you will truly be an independent traveler!
Travel is a great learning experience that will carry over into your whole life and will change you forever. (Repeat that sentence.) Really. It doesn't have to be just another vacation.
Let's get out there!
Footloose Table of Contents ...............
Chapter 1. Planning Your Trip
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