THE CATCH-22 OF TRAVEL.

"Calvin and Hobbes Go Exploring"- Cartoon by Bill Watterson

We get stale in the same place for years no matter how much we find to do or how busy our lives become.  I live in a lovely city but I need a break from it from time to time.  Travel blows a fresh breeze through my mind.  It almost literally feels like it and I feel invigorated and refreshed.

I guess brain cells need to take in something different from time to time to exercise them or they go onto automatic.  Just imagine all those tiny cells yawning as they channel the same information when you go through the same routine day after day.  No wonder they start to make you edgy for change.  They decide to revolt and give you a hard time: "Let's go on a holiday, we're bored," they nag me.

They don't seem to let up even when they know I haven't the money.  They just work on making me testier and testier until I have to have a word with them or threaten them with sedation.   So in order to shut them up while I'm attempting to save enough to go away I've taken up this blog to challenge them a little.  It's quieted them down a bit, or rather it's giving them something new to do, but I can still hear them whinging in the background even as I write this.  In order to placate them a little, I'm writing about travel.

The trouble with planning a trip to a place you've never been is that you need to have been there to do it properly.  It's the Catch-22 of travel.  Yes, I know there are travel agents, brochures and friends who have done the trip and can tell you about their experiences.

There are also travel shows on television but I have come to avoid these with religious zeal.  At first I couldn't figure out what bugged me about them, apart from the obvious, which is that the presenters are paid to travel all over the world.  This is my idea of a dream job except for the size of camera they have to lug around.

Eventually I figured out why they annoy me.  It is because presenters are people from my own country, or from a similar cultural background,  whose familiar language and manner overlay and obscure the cultural impact of the place they are covering.  It's like adding too much salt to a meal.  The subtle flavours beneath are overwhelmed by something stronger and thoroughly domestic with which you're all too familiar.

The presenters, although very professional and upbeat, also deliver their reports in a patois developed for the show.  This has the effect of causing them to come across as variations of one another and, by progression, the place they are covering suffers the same fate. 

Even with these factors taken into account a television travelogue can only cater to two senses; sight and sound.  It can't convey the cultural vibe, the atmosphere or the smell.  We use all five senses when we travel and so even the best show can't do more than show and tell.

The hotels, facilities and restaurants that appear on them also usually offer free accommodation and services to the presenters.  There's nothing like free advertising is there?  So you aren't going to hear the presenter say: "God the smell around here makes me want to puke", or "The locals all have their hands out begging and look like they want to cut my throat", or "It's so hot here I can't wait to get home."  What we get, therefore is a Pollyanna version of the place.

They will also decide what to film in order to portray the aspects of the destination they are there to promote.  All the different shots or videos are then edited to form a smooth dialogue, knitting together the pertinent pieces .  A travelogue might concentrate on hotels, local shopping and places of interest to the tourist.  I doubt that you'll catch a news item or a mugging happening in the background while the crew is filming.  If it did happen I bet you wouldn't get to see it.

Even on a large screen television you are limited to a miniature view of the whole.  I mean you can't just spin your head around and see everything as the presenter can.   Film only shows bits and pieces of places not the vistas surrounding them.  For instance, over the years I've watched television series and films set in London, however, nothing on the screen prepared me for what I experienced when I was actually there or its flatness or greyness.

The best part of travel is experiencing the unknown with every one of your senses.  If we've never been somewhere before, to arrive in the midst of it is almost like being reborn.  We have no familiar points of reference.  We don't know which corner to turn next or where anything is.  We can feel lost but renewed.  We can discover things again.  Naturally we go prepared, but imagine if you were sent there in the way Scottie in the Star Trek series beams Captain Kirk to a planet.

Imagine you landed like that in the middle of Paris as a complete newcomer.  What do you do?  You've probably seen films set there, you've seen pictures of the place, you've heard about it but you don't have a map and you probably don't speak the language.  You can't just cut and edit to the next hotel.  You have to figure out where one is and physically get there.  Some people would find this to be an exciting challenge, some others might panic, but not one of them would be bored.

Travel lets us become like a child again because it allows us to take in something new, which in our everyday environment rarely happens.  I think that's why travel satisfies us.  It has the effect of making us feel something that we haven't in years and also relieves the boredom of the same old, same old.

Travel also educates us as to how different other cultures can be.  A traveller from Australia or the US might think that asking a direct question of someone in a foreign country is perfectly fine, only to discover they are considered rude.  Many a traveller has had the dubious thrill of being tossed in gaol for doing something they consider innocent.  Travellers are always prone to greater danger through ignorance but that's the risk of exploration.  In fact the explorers of old seemed to be people who were addicted to danger.  Boredom drives people to extremes and that's why it's best to let off steam regularly.

I feel sorry for business people I talk to who say things like: "Oh, I travel overseas a lot for business but I'm just there for a few days.  I only see the airport and the office".  I bet these people have very unhappy brain cells or they've scared them into submission.

I'm building up quite a head of steam at the moment and my brain cells are almost in revolt.  I think I'm hearing talk of a union being formed in their mutterings.  I can only hope someone pays me to travel somewhere soon or I win some money.  I don't really care where I travel to, I just have to shut the little guys up.

END