traveling v touristing

Ahoy,

I don't remember where I spotted this quote. I think it was one of the times I was traveling and it's been stuck in my head ever since. It took me a while to wrap my head around its meaning when I first saw it. I stopped in my tracks for a minute mulling it over word by word, but I think it's pretty spot on for a concept I've been quite familiar with.

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” 

– G.K. Chesterton

Philosophically, this is a concept that I've tried to carry with me in all my travels. In looking for a world beyond my own, nothing has offered the sort of fascination and discomfort that has come with traveling. There's a sense of discovery and exploration that comes with being in a foreign land- having to deal with signs, gestures, languages, people, and a culture unlike your own. To really see a new place involves all five senses, and to be unafraid of overwhelming those senses.

To travel is to create an authentic experience of immersion in another world. I understand that as a foreigner, I wouldn't know where to begin in creating something authentic of that which I know nothing. But, still, I feel like there are certain niceties of a tour group, for example, that nullify the experience of travel. Having a guide quip to you in your own tongue as you ride rooftop through a new city is to tourist. Being deposited for x minutes to snap a memory because everyone else is is to tourist. This experience deprives you of interacting with the locals, shopkeepers, streets. You have no moments of bewilderment with different customs, with new smells, with the architecture. Having someone talk at you, spewing facts and fiction, telling you what you have to do or not do - sounds like things out of a guide book I should have read before I made this trip. Traveling should be on your own terms, and if your terms are to have a real life guidebook hold your hand through this strange city - than it is not my place to tell you one thing or another.

Of the places I've been, some of my most memorable experiences are of endless winding streets, foreign accents, mixed up conversations, going somewhere I'm not sure I should go. Though I map out a path at the beginning of the day, I'm not sure how far off of it I will trail and I'm not sure what I'll encounter along it. Getting lost is one of my favorite aspects of traveling. The farther I get from tourists, and more strange looks I get from locals means I'm on the right path. In my mind, I am never lost - I'm exploring. 

wanderlustily afloat,

jt