Why We Travel

The article "Why We Travel" by Pico Iyer talks about his opinion on why people travel to foreign places and what they expect to gain from their trips. He also mentions a few of his past experiences and his feelings and emotions based on them. Based on this article, we are able extract that traveling is not just the matter of going somewhere other than your home and coming back the same person. It is somehow a little more than that as it affects us in ways unexplainable.

An interesting point brought up in this article is that traveling is a way to reverse time, to a small extent, and make a day last a year. I strongly agree with this point as I have experienced it myself. Every time I travel either with my family or friends, we tend to naturally want to cram a million and one activities in one day. This is so because we do not want to "waste time" and want to make use of the little time we have away from home. However, this does not always guarantee an enjoyable time. For example, when my sister and I went to Singapore, we tried to fit in so many things in a single day. For instance, we planned to go for a shopping spree as well as a night safari, which were both on total opposite sides of town all in one day. Of course, seeing how we planned to fail, we almost missed our bus and what not. This just caused a lot of stress and really exhausted us because our day turned out to be so long. Therefore, traveling definitely maximizes our day and enables us to use it to its full potential.

Another fascinating point that was mentioned in the article was that people tend to be more easily excited abroad, and even kinder. In elaboration, every small thing when traveling becomes fun and thrilling, even a simple trip to the supermarket. The reason to this is difficult to explain. My guess, however, is that when traveling, we are naturally put in a good mood and our mindset is "I am here to have a good time" and therefore, everything becomes a nice and happy thing. My explanation to why we are kinder is because when abroad, people are out of their comfort zones, and thus feel a little insecure and scared. It is completely normal to feel this way when we are away from home and that explains why we tend to be nicer to everyone around us in order to avoid making any enemies and instead, making good acquaintances. Consequently, it is not unusual for people to be especially friendly and constantly fascinated when on trips.

Besides the points mentioned above, it is also believed that people take trips to be moved. The term 'being moved' in this sense refers to witnessing something that stirs up emotion in someone. I can relate to this as I myself have been moved during my trip to Bali. I was traveling with my aunts, uncles, and cousins and therefore I just went along with the adults' plans and had no say in what we did or where we went. On the last day of our trip, the driver took us to these beautiful