On a recent flight overseas, I opened a copy of the International Herald Tribune to find the "World's Most Traveled Man" grinning at me with a chiclet smile. For a brief moment, a surge of envy swelled in my stomach.The article described how so-and-so spent a few million dollars over the course of four years to knock off the Guinness record by setting foot in every country, territory, island, atoll and speck of rock that dared rear its head from beneath the ocean's surface.But as he relayed some generic impressions, I started to feel sorry for the World's Most Traveled Man.
During the course of his globetrotting he did not miss a single place. He just missed the point. Travel is not about distances covered and photo-ops; it is a matter of inquiry, a dialectic between the Self and the Other, where time is the key ingredient. In his haste to "complete the task," Sir Travel-a-lot reminded me that a frayed passport is next to worthless if you don't have a cast of faces, a personal memory for every stamp. I know the feeling.
On my first trip abroad at the age of 12, I embarked on a "whirlwind extravaganza" bus tour with my mother through 14 countries in Western Europe. For a month I sat sandwiched between Australian retirees with thick thighs hurtling from city to city, hotel to museum to restaurant, repeat, repeat, repeat, in a soap-opera on wheels shielded from the continent by glass and speed.
Before I had finished my gelato in St. Mark's Square in Venice, plates were being broken at an 'authentic' Greek taverna in Athens. And not a moment after we had departed from a dumpy London hotel one rainy day, we were coming full circle in Amsterdam as our shameless Dutch guide made a final soliloquy to his beloved Red Light District.
The trip was clean, organized, varied and totally forgettable. Assembly-line tourism at its worst.
Ever since, I've made a point of taking matters into my own hands where travel is concerned and have never looked back since. When friends get wind of my upcoming plans, they often sigh wistfully: "Man, I wish I could do that
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