Where to? What next?

Travellers aren’t just thrill seekers and escape artists. We carry something of yours and unpack it at the right places.

Travellers are escape artists. So my friend Marc says. The nature of his work involves a community of itinerants.

“I’ve seen it over and over. As soon as shit hits the fan they’re out and on to the next adventure. They’re so skilled in running away, they wouldn’t stay to resolve a situation”.

I sat with that statement for a while before acknowledging some truth to it.

Now hear me out…

Travellers learn, along our journeys, that all of humanity’s challenges are similar in nature: the stretch for survival, the management of resources, the effort to unite (or divide) in order to arrive at a goal.

Our desires are the same across cultures and subcultures: to discover the meaning of our existence, to discern our purpose, to find our sense of self and belonging, to experience joy and love, to be held in our grief and discomfort.

Changing location does not change these factors.

An island community in Cambodia has practically the same issues as a mountain village in Morocco — sanitation, mass tourism, industrial development, loss of culture.

Residents of a hinterland in Northern California have the same small-town disputes as folks in a coastal shire in Western Australia. The affairs are the same, only the characters are different.

How do travellers escape narratives that are so alike anywhere?

We don’t.

Instead, we learn to watch old events unfold in new landscapes. We become master observers, looking outside-in, dissecting the human condition, rarely taking a position.

Curiouser and curiouser

Our world is changing all the time. The curious are eager to be at the precipice of those changes.

How is a place currently taking shape? What do thriving communities have in common? What can we learn about the foreign and the exotic? Of fungi and fruits, wildlife and weather patterns, human rituals and superstitions, traditions and histories?

There’s so much richness and madness to be found…so why not seek?

Activism via Storytelling

But what do we drifters and dirtbags do with all the ideas and information we gather?

We do what our ancestors have done long before the invention of language: We tell stories — tales that shape our humanity and our futures.

We do it on grassroots level, not much different from the bones of film streaming services.

The rise of Netflix and similar platforms isn’t accidental. We subscribe to them not only because we’re looking for entertainment, but also because we seek inspiration, because we desire to enrich our identity through narratives that relate to our ideals and values.

We sing your song

There were centuries when only the privileged could traverse our globular home. Marco Polo, Charles Darwin, Freya Stark…among others. They shared with us the unseen, and cultural spectacles outside our imaginations.

In 21st century Earth, there isn’t as much left to explore and our distractions are immense. Modern travellers are ofttimes seen as rats, merely jumping from place to place.

Pico Iyer, Anthony Bourdain, Chris McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) and many others, redefined the role of new-age explorers: intimate storytelling that touches on personal connections and the conditions that plague and inspire our generation.

When you meet someone who behaves like they’re road-tested, sit with them. Tell them what hell tastes like. Tell them what paradise feels like. Tell them your story so they may carry something of yours…and unpack it at the right places.

Stories are threads that connect us all.