“The world is a book. Those who do not travel read only a page” – This is a famous quote by Saint Augustine.

 

I grew up in Pune, a small town in India in the days of my childhood. Till the age of 20, I would define myself as one who had read at best a few paragraphs of one page of the book of the world. My parents, till the end of their lives, were probably destined to read just a few lines of the same book. 

As far as I can remember, none of us in our family had travelled much, and certainly not out of India. Coming from a highly educated, wealthy, well-to-do family who lost every single penny at the time of the India-Pakistan partition, my parents had to start life right from scratch from the refugee camps set up in various parts of India. Passport was a document alien to us.

Geography was surely my weakest subject. It began to get better with opportunities of travel which destiny opened up for me. At the age of 20, my engineering college took our class on a one-month train journey covering the whole of North India right up to Jammu and Kashmir. I got my first passport at the age of 23 when I got my first brief international assignment in Bangkok and Hong Kong with an international bank.

Today, through no major effort on my part, but through sheer good luck and good fortune, I have had the opportunity to travel to 60 countries, have covered all continents except central and south America. For sixteen consecutive years, I travelled about 100 days a year. And realized how right Saint Augustine was when he mentioned that the world is a beautiful book. 

The whole experience of travel has made me realize the beauty, the complexity and the wealth of this huge and diverse planet that we occupy.

Travel in every format comes with challenges, and by navigating our way through, whether successfully or not, we reap the benefit of new life experiences. I will never forget the first time I took a flight. I will never forget my travels into eastern Europe when the Berlin wall came down, or travel into almost all CIS countries after the breakdown of USSR.

After the first two years of flying, something made me make the decision to collect boarding passes. With about a 90 percent accuracy record, my last flight boarding pass was number 634. That is just sheer good fortune.

Travel makes one aware of the huge diversity that exists in our world. And, at a deeper level, makes us realize how alike we are as a human race. It is the inherent desire in every human to be happy, to have a deep sense of security. Everywhere, depending upon where one focusses, one gets to see people taking care of their families and of each other. We learn to travel with wonder. We learn to explore. We learn to honor each place and its culture. 

Travel teaches us to try out new and varied cuisines. Imagine the passion with which we are willing to try out food of different lands. Imagine the hours of time spent and the excitement in just discussing what we ate and saw. If we were to use just ten percent of the same passion and excitement to understand each other better as a race, we would help in creating a much better and sustainable planet for ourselves and for future generations.

It would be fair to say that most of us travel to lose ourselves in new destinations, new cultures, new places, and in the process, many of us end up finding better versions of ourselves.  

Travel helps to open up our eyes and our hearts. We surely learn much more about the world than our TV, newspapers and online media would want us to know. Frequent travel makes us realize that the media projects a rather negative image of the world. If we stay at home, we will find that we have a very narrow view of the world and can relate only to people who are like ourselves. 

Travel changes our outlook and life gets defined by a wide range of cultural influences and interesting life experiences.

These days, it is so heart-warming and pleasing to see more and more of the middle class as well as the aged getting hooked to the idea of travel and seeing places. No matter how close or far, no matter how reasonable or premium the travel experiences are, it is wonderful to see flights, tours, destinations packed with more and more of the middle class as well as the elderly. And if one is part of such a diverse tour group, it can be a hugely bonding and learning experience.

A fear of failure can limit success. However, thanks to its unpredictable nature, travel can help us to get a handle on those feelings of fear. By forcing ourselves to manage situations ad-hoc and pushing ourselves to take on new challenges at a moment’s notice, travel breaks down fears and teaches many lessons. 

One key lesson travel teaches all: That often the end-result is of little consequence; it’s what we take away from the journey that matters most.