Why do you travel?

In planning and experiencing travel, it's important to understand the purpose of a specific trip. But it's also important to have a broader set of travel values to guide planning and on the ground decisions. I discuss both after the jump.

There are a multitude of reasons to travel, and if you're on this site you probably already have at least a partial answer to this question. But none of us likely has a single answer to the question all the time. Sometimes we have to travel for business. Sometimes we want to escape, relax, and be pampered. Sometimes we seek adventure and new experiences. Sometimes we want to learn. I've traveled for all of these reasons at one time or another, and whenever I'm planning a trip, I always try to have a clear answer to why I'm traveling this time.

The motivation for the trip is important to understand. If you want to relax, then it doesn't make much sense to be running from place to place, staying in 4 different locations over the course of 10 days. If you want to see as much of a region as possible, then the itinerary will have to take that into account.

The specific purpose of a trip no doubt matters, but I find it helpful to maintain some core travel values that can help to guide trip planning, execution, and evaluation no matter what kind of trip I'm taking. Each person's travel values will be different, but having such core values and being able to articulate them will help to shape your travel experiences in positive ways. You'll be less likely to get sucked into popular experiences that you won't appreciate all that much. You'll move toward experiences that change you in desirable ways, and be enjoyable along the way.

My Travel Values

1) Find Beauty

Every trip I take ought to connect me with beauty. Whether that beauty comes in the form of art, or architecture, or food, or history; I want to see and experience beautiful things and places when I travel

2) Act with Justice

When I travel, I do my best to make sure I treat everyone I come in contact with fairly. This means knowing the customs for tipping where I travel, and tipping well. It means not doing business with companies that don't treat their employees fairly or are substantially harming the environment. It's hard to get this one right all the time (I do fly, after all), but I try to at least be cognizant of these issues when I travel.

3) Keep Learning

I'm a curious person, and I always like to learn new things. This probably explains why my main job is conducting social science research. This carries over into travel as well. When I go to a place I want to learn about its culture, history, and politics. I want to experience real life in a place to the extent possible. And as I experience new places and people, I want to store that knowledge away and also let the new knowledge change the way I think and act.

4) Flexible Planning

I am an obsessive planner, but I also value flexibility while traveling. So I plan for flexibility. Sometimes there is a basic plan with several options that we might consider. I'm willing to go off book, but there has to be a high probability that it will turn out ok. So, I learn as much about the possibilities before we go, so that I have a store of information that can help later when deciding whether to call an audible. This is also important for the way we travel because Jana is not a big fan of uncertainty. She likes to have a clear plan. So we have that. But we also build in options to the plan so that it does not feel stifling.

5) Enjoy the Journey

Things don't always go as planned. We get lost all the time. Sometimes the hotel is not as nice as hoped. It can be a challenge to make long trips and deal with other travelers. But no matter what happens, I want to enjoy the journey, be calm, and fully take in both the good and the bad as we travel.