I started this travel blog with the intention of writing about my travels and the pleasure it has always given me to go to different places, meet people of different cultures in their native lands, eat local food and have a good time in general. Unfortunately my travels have been limited to short trips. One month, three weeks or a fortnight, but every time I go on a trip, I make it as if it is an adventure.
Today when travelling has become so common, so many people can go to places where 30-40 years ago only persons with a sense of adventure ventured. Overland trips to India and Nepal, were hippi culture. Now people go to China, Russia, Viet Nam and Cambodia and Burma. You name it. Few people then travelled to australia and New Zealand.
In europe people started going to Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey, because things were cheaper there. I remember in England in the sixties and seventies, when some one went to Costa Brava or the Canary Islands for his holidays, he had gone "abroad" or people said "he is on the continent"'
Today's traveller is neither an explorar who has to travel to discover the north-west-passage or go to the South Pole for the glory of his country, nor an adventurer, who has, for his personal glory, to meet the natives of Papua New Guinea or to climb the peak of Machu Pichu.
Most of the people I have met in Spain, Portugal, Greece etc, go there for the sun in winter, to escape the harsh winter of their own country or to go there for holidays, not because things are cheap there. Today it has become far more cheaper to travel to distant lands, long haul holidays, and one of the reasons is the fact that things are cheaper there, you can stay there longer and visit many interesting places. And you find travellers from USA, europe, on trips in South Asia, South America, Middle East. Any where. You find back packers in Bali, Phi Phi Islands, Goa and Kerala and taking it easy in China Town in Kuala Lumpur. I have met travellers who have been to Phi Phi islands in Thailand because Lonley Planet Guide described them as one of planet's jaw dropping beauties. And indeed it is so. That the beaches in Prehensian isles in Malaysia are divine and there is no motorized traffic, white beaches and turquuoise-blue water, is also true. What better reason one needs to travel to these distant places other than visit them because they are there?
Travel guides, travel forums, internet and never ending stories of travellers to distant places, their experiences, cheap travel etc, all have contributed to more people traveling to more places. Be it to meditate in Puri, take Yoga lessons in Kerala or Rishikesh or go snorkeling in deep green and dark blue waters of Thailand, it is almost always a pleasant experience to look forward to.
Posted by Island Hopper at 06:30
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