Ylliks

In this article Carissa Bluestone talks about ways to make voluntourism (in short: travel combined with volunteer work) more responsible. She also briefly touches on the subject of ego-tourism: people who travel somewhere to brag about it when returned home. Should you be envious of them?

Even in this recession people are still traveling places with exotic names like Malaysia , Bora Bora, Seychelles or Antigua. And there’s nothing wrong with that: people should travel wherever they want. But shouldn’t it be more about what you do on your holiday than where you do it? Sure, it’s nice to lay on a beach in Spain, but why do it for 2 weeks and not take in some of the beauty of the inlands? Why stay in a resort for a week in Egypt when you’re so near to the pyramids? Same goes for a stay in a resort in Costa Rica when nature’s beauty is just around the corner. Or those who go out and get drunk every night in Greece and lay around in the shade all day with a hangover.

Laying in the sun or going out and getting drunk is something you can do at or close to home. You don’t have to sit in a airplane for 10+ hours for that. Sometimes it seems that people just want to brag about having been some place, without actually experiencing it (although there’s always a question about how you can really experience a place when you’re only there for one or two weeks, but that’s a different discussion) or get a real feel about the country.

You shouldn’t be envious about those travelers.

Maybe a little envy should go out to people who travel and have the best of experiences. People who do and see things they can’t at home. Who take themselves out of their comfort zone. Those who have taken the effort to go outside of the mainstream places and try to get a feel about the locals and their way of living. The ones who try to get the most out of their travel and succeed. They not only show you pictures of beautiful places but tell you stories about how it felt to stand there or have a funny anecdote of what happened there. The kind of stories that make you want to go there.

And the thing about it is, is that you don’t need to go far to get those experiences. Sometimes you can even have them in your own country. It’s true what they say: travel is about the journey, not the destination.