Rolf Potts, the author of “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel,” points out that the experience of travel starts at home, during the initial planning phase, where we first start looking at maps of the future destinations. I am currently at the stage of finalizing the details of my first-ever trip to Shanghai. It will be a relatively short visit, part of which will be taken up by a research conference. Still, I will have a couple of days to explore the place on my own. This is a typical mode of travel for me, and I find it effective to do it with an assumption that there will be chance to return to the same place in the future. Although everything changes, and the same experience cannot be repeated, this mindset removes some of the pressure of attempting to see too much in too short of a time.
One important aspect of travel planning is that it forces us to address the issues at work and at home that otherwise would have lingered on the background of daily business for a long time. Travel dates, defined by the booked airplane tickets, serve as a rigid deadline for either completing or dropping projects on the to-do list. Either way, addressing these lingering projects in a definitive way, gives the future trip a sense of reality by freeing up mental energy and distraction-free time for it. In this sense, doing the work that enable the travel is the first and fundamental part of the travel experience.
Related
