Rocking in the Free World

There are many reasons why one would like to travel to a particular place. I can’t say for sure what motivates other people, but I am inspired to visit places that are on the cooler side (temperature-wise), that have rich history and culture, aren’t particularly crowded or over-run by the average ignoramus camera-toting, loud-mouthed incidental visitor tourists and are accessible within my (currently) not quite meager budget.

The interest generated towards places that are on my “must travel to” (and possibly live at for a few months) list have been because of similar reasons, as well as because of how good the portrayal of said places has been in travelogues and other associated forms of literature, how much media coverage that place has received and to a reasonable extent, due to the nice way in which most televised travel programs have showcased these places.

Recommendations from trusted friends whose travel sensibilities match mine have also played a huge part in choosing where to go, depending on how much time is available at hand.

I have visited quite a few places on a whim, but there has been a reasonable degree of background research that has gone in to knowing what to do when I get to a particular place so that I have my bearings correct. In that sense, I haven’t yet tread the paths that a true blue itinerant would’ve already sprinted on.

In recent times, I have had strong tendencies to want to join the travel literature bandwagon, after reaching near-saturation levels while covering the rock and allied genres music scene in my three year (and counting) stint at RSJ. I’ve not had opportunities yet, but what I have figured out is that traveling and writing (and pardon me for stating the obvious) are both integral parts of wanting to achieve that goal.

While scanning travel literature of all sizes including what I can see in popular travel magazines, to content on travel website to reading books (that are sometimes tomes in disguise) about intrepid travelers who have had a chance to eloquently express in words the entire gamut of their numerous experiences, I have noticed a strong tendency for most to romanticize a place to make it more appealing.

The opinions of travel writers about a place and their outlook towards their experiences are what shapes their prose and makes them wax eloquent about a few locations and diss the other ones completely. I have learnt that it makes immense sense to take what has been written with a minimal amount of skepticism because the grand majestic buildings described might not be the way you imagined them to be, the cozy restaurant situated in a small cobbled by-lane might be too cozy for comfort with flies running all around and so on.

Taking someone’s worded opinions as being sacrosanct and trying to re-live their travel experiences would result in massive disappointments, especially if the author in question is a major fan boy of the place he has visited, for reasons that you would not necessarily subscribe to.

What I have managed to learn from all this is that there are a few good reasons to visit a certain place and those reasons will remain constant. A subset of those reasons would comprise what I have mentioned at the beginning of this piece.

However, your outlook and what you expect out of your travel would strongly differ from mine, or that of the travel writers’ and if this distinction in individual tastes is accounted for, then the appreciation that you have for those who write about where they go to and what they do when they get there might increase beyond you merely appreciating what good wordsmiths they seem to be.