I wrote this horribly opinionated, elitist, provocational polemic last year, and have been wondering what to do with it ever since. There may be nuggets of truth in there somewhere, but please don’t take it too seriously! From the outset – I don’t think I’m a particularly unconventional person. I just think it’s worth approaching the world with a skeptic’s eye, and I detest laziness, ignorance and complacency. This outlook tells me that conventions are there to be questioned.
Somewhere you've never been / Photo by Tom Allen
Here is an assortment of travel-related myths that I’ve come across:
1. Travelling = Backpacking
“Let’s get straight to the heart of the matter. If we want to go travelling, we need “stuff”. Common sense requires that we immediately start thinking about our luggage. After all, it’s going to carry everything we need – laptop, mobile, cameras, etc. And so it follows that the solution to our kit-carrying dilemma should be a bloated sack of straps and strangely-shaped padding that attaches firmly to one’s back.
“I mean, what other options are there anyway?”
2. Travelling = Public Transport
“Now we need to move our stuff. Easy! There’s this great idea of public transport. It means you have to share, and you have to pay someone to do the actual work; and of course you can’t just go to any old place – you have to go wherever’s available, or at least somewhere on the route.
“But all of that is far better than the alternative, which is to do it all ourselves by some form of independent transportation.”
3. Travelling = Paying To Sleep
“We’ve got our stuff, and we’ve got a way to get it from A to B. But what happens when we get to B? We need somewhere to sleep, eat, drink, and be the social creatures that we were born to be. Luckily, most inhabited places will have some form of accommodation available for people just like us, and food as well, and all we have to do is pay the proprietor to sort it all out for us.
“This clearly beats the alternative, which is to make tedious preparations to – well, to sleep rough in any old place, or cook (hah!), which just wouldn’t do at all, and would be completely impractical and usually impossible anyway.”
Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog
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