A Traveller’s Perspective

Life is a journey. A series of interconnected contradictions. We undertake this journey to discover truth and beauty, only to discover that all truth is relative and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We travel to foreign countries only to return home and find ourselves foreigners in our own country.

Luckily we are not alone. On every journey there are always fellow travelers.

In my experience all of us, as travelers, have one thing in common. We all want our experience to be as authentic as possible.

From mainstream tourists that buy packaged holidays and fill up tour buses, to hardcore independent travelers that hitch hike in countries where they don’t speak the language. Neither would sign up for something inauthentic.

And herein lies the contradiction that connects travelers of all types. We all understand that we are not local and yet we all want to come as close as possible to having the experience of a local.

In some of the top destinations around the world the locals can seldom afford to pay for the luxury of fancy hotels that cater specifically for the tourists that visit their cities. But even the fanciest hotels always add local flavor to their luxury.

If a traveler were to completely authenticate their experience, and actually become a local, they would have to rent an apartment and get a job to sustain themselves in their newly adopted home. They would then cease being a traveler. Before long they will start traveling again for the very same reason they chose to do so in the first place.

We all want the inside scoop when we travel. “Where do the locals go?” There is a general consensus amongst travelers that if it’s good enough for the locals it’s the place to be.

We would all like to meet a honest local to show us the “real” spots. Yet, obviously, none of us want to be that local. We are travelers, and, as enticing as any particular place may be, we all know that there are countless other unexplored places with infinite potential.

Very recently I traveled with my wife to her original home in Russia. Her family still lives in Syktyvkar, a day and a half by train from Moscow, capital of the Komi Republic.

This was the most recent of several journeys we have undertaken together since meeting one another in Amsterdam more than two years ago. We fell in love with one another because we are both travelers.

It was our second trip to Russia together, but the first time that we traveled outside the highly developed metropolitan areas of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. To visit the “other Russia”, as the rest of this huge country is known, is an experience completely unlike that of visiting the two big cities.

This most recent journey to Russia was special. It is perhaps because of this journey that I have been able to hang up my travelling boots and take a long enough break to start a new business. It was special because I had never been this close to the “inside scoop” in a foreign country. It was overwhelming at times. In the case of travelers, even the most salted ones, ignorance can perhaps be bliss. It is incredibly difficult to suddenly become a local in a foreign country. To share in local habits, rituals and understandings can be fun if one is able to return to a secluded hotel room where you can sit back and silently contemplate what just happened. It gives you time to absorb and digest the experience in your own time and space.

But being intimately connected to a local means that you live with their family for the duration of your stay and in that case there is no secluded hotel room.

This is what is meant with the saying – To be thrown in at the deep end. There is no time to adjust and no choice but to cope with whatever comes your way again and again, whether it is strange food or undiluted vodka.

I realize that this kind of cross cultural pollination is on the increase and becoming ever more frequent as the world gets smaller.

Although well worth pursuing it is not within the scope of this tiny article to fully explore this global phenomenon.

Suffice it to say that “being thrown in at the deep end” implies the existence of a “shallow end” also. From mass market pre-packaged conventional tourism, through hardcore backpacking to cross cultural pollination there are countless gradients. At some point your feet can no longer touch the bottom and for different people this happens at different stages. Some people can barely stand exiting their front door and others never return home.

Do yourself a favor. Once you no longer touch bottom with your feet and you manage to keep your head above water, keep swimming. Do not turn back. Cherish the moment no matter how difficult it may be. Do not drown yourself. If you can’t swim you need to learn first. But if you can swim, keep swimming.

Despite appearances it is not at all pointless. Despite the establishments demands that you work yourself to death in a cubicle and only take one two-week holiday a year, and that in the shallowest end of the hotel swimming pool, being thrown in at the deep end is actually the way to go. For a long time it will look like a pointless waste of time and energy only because the rewards you are reaping cannot be bought in a souvenir shop. The rewards for swimming at the deep end are internal rewards.

What are those rewards?

Countless sages, teachers, psychologists, writers, travelers and many many others have described it in various ways. In short the reward is simply this: Mastery of Yourself.

We all have many moments of weakness and loneliness. That is inevitable. But to choose to walk tall with a straight back when it is much easier to crawl on all fours is what makes life worth living.

Life can be hard. Why not simply give up? Because giving up is the default option. Walking tall is the only choice you will ever make.

Herein lies the contradiction: To find yourself through traveling you must first lose yourself in traveling. To truly be yourself you must first be no one in particular and anyone at the same time.

To become the master of yourself is worth a lifetime of confusion.

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Hermann Vivier