I often feel burdened by everyday routines and chores that make my life depressingly commonplace. It has always been my great ambition to find a sound retreat from the greyness of reality, something to break the routine and escape from the dullness of everyday life. It must be so nice to leave the humdrum behind, pull yourself together and create some everlasting memories! And suddenly I realized: what could be more effective than an actual escape? Why not just get on the road, change my environment, surround myself with new people, new landscapes, fill my head with new thoughts?
The idea of travelling as means of creating more adventures in life has appealed to me for a long time. I believe true travelers are spirited, clever, inventive, and adventurous people who spend their lives fighting narrow-mindedness and opening up new horizons. They are constantly looking for new opportunities and are never afraid, but always willing to take them. Consequently, I would also need a little originality, enthusiasm, guts, and some ideas to get started as a traveler. I developed my own set of reasons for why I want to travel: I want to challenge myself, grow as a person, stretch my limits, see things the way they are rather than thinking of the way they might be, get new experiences along with the feeling of absolute freedom.
Inspiration to travel came to me from a variety of sources. However, the most powerful source was presented by works and biographies of such prominent people as Ernest Hemingway, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, and Charles Dickens, with whom I met when I started working at writer-elite.com. All these great men were writing stories and books being inspired by their travel experiences, which influenced generations of people and remain just as relevant nowadays. A whole separate tourism branch was developed on the basis of their lives and writings. Tourists in London are offered to take tours and see Victorian London through the eyes of Charles Dickens, along with the places where he lived in, and those which he brought to life in his novels. Interested travelers may also take Hemingway tours in Paris, Cuba etc. One may take a Kipling tour in India, or a Robert Louis Stevenson journey across Southern France. However, I tend to differentiate between what it means to be a tourist and what it means to be a traveler. For me, the main difference is the mindset, the person’s attitude towards travelling. Whether one travels only one country, a hundred of countries, or even never leaves the boarders of his home country, he can be a traveler. A traveler lives every moment of a trip, appreciates every inch of the newly explored ground and of everything around. A traveler observes and comprehends, touches and experiences everything to full extent, draws the maximum possible reward from the travels, and enriches his life with exploration of new things.
There are so many places I would like to see and so many people I would like to meet. There are so many new precious experiences waiting for me around the world. Understanding of this only inspires me to embrace every opportunity in life and seize every moment, for it takes more than a plane ticket to become a traveler and truly travel the world. Therefore, I no longer believe in such things as humdrum, or greyness of everyday life. Having given it some thought and gone through a number of examples, I understand that a true traveler always finds something extraordinary even in the most ordinary of places and things. That is precisely what I will try and do from now on, and that is what will help me bear with dignity the honorable name of a traveler.
Love traveling.
