Ode to an Itinerant Soul

Explore Further

Some people feel most at home in one place.

Others feel at home in the world.

There is no need to choose one beautiful place and declare all the others less worthy.

Mountains.

Deserts.

Villages.

Cities.

Islands.

Forests.

Rivers.

Crowded markets.

Empty roads.

Cold mornings.

Warm seas.

The world is one body.

Why spend a lifetime looking only at its palm?

Go see what else is there.

The World Is One Body

Imagine spending your entire life looking at the palm of your hand.

It might be a beautiful palm.

You could know every line.

Every crease.

Every mark.

But it would still be only one part of you.

I think of the world in much the same way.

Every country, island, culture and landscape is part of something larger.

To travel is not necessarily to escape home.

Sometimes it helps us understand home better.

And sometimes the farther away we go, the more clearly we see how much human beings share.

You Do Not Need to Be Rich

Travel can be extraordinarily expensive.

It does not have to be.

You can sleep in a five-star hotel.

You can also sleep in a hostel, campground, guesthouse, homestay, sleeper train or ferry cabin.

You can eat in famous restaurants.

Or follow the line of local workers waiting at a food stall.

You can hire a private driver.

Or walk.

Money can make travel more comfortable.

It cannot guarantee that it will make travel more meaningful.

Sometimes comfort even separates us from the very place we came to experience.

Some of the richest experiences in travel cost almost nothing.

A conversation.

A sunrise.

A path.

A shared meal.

A stranger who helps you.

A language you cannot quite understand.

A place you had never heard of yesterday.

Begin With a Backpack

You do not need to begin with a journey around the world.

Begin with two nights.

Take a train somewhere you have never been.

Cross a border by bus.

Camp on an island.

Stay in a hostel.

Walk through a neighborhood without an itinerary.

Eat something you cannot pronounce.

Learn how to say:

Hello.

Please.

Thank you.

Then see what happens.

The itinerant soul is not defined by distance.

It is defined by curiosity.

Go Around the World

Yes, it is still possible to buy a ticket designed specifically to take you around the world.

Two major airline alliances offer formal round-the-world fares.

Star Alliance allows travelers to build a round-the-world journey across its member airlines.

Its current basic rules include:

oneworld also offers round-the-world products, including the continent-based oneworld Explorer and distance-based Global Explorer.

A formal round-the-world ticket is not automatically the cheapest choice.

Sometimes a mixture of individual tickets, airline miles, low-cost carriers and overland travel works better.

But there is something wonderfully old-fashioned about telling a booking system:

“I would like to go around the world, please.”

Do Not Fly Over Everything

Airplanes are miraculous.

They are also remarkably good at making the world disappear.

One airport.

Several hours.

Another airport.

Everything in between is gone.

Try occasionally refusing to let it disappear.

Take the train.

Take the bus.

Take the ferry.

Walk across a border when it is legal and practical.

Watch the language change.

Watch the food change.

Watch houses change.

Watch landscapes change.

Let geography happen gradually.

Rome2Rio compares ways of getting between places using combinations of trains, buses, ferries, flights, cars and other transportation.

It can be especially useful when you know where you want to go but do not yet know how to get there.

Take the Train

There is something fundamentally different about arriving somewhere at ground level.

You have seen the distance.

You have felt it.

One particularly useful independent resource is The Man in Seat 61.

It explains how to travel by train and ferry across Europe and many parts of Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australasia.

Rather than treating transportation merely as the inconvenience between destinations, it treats the journey as part of the adventure.

Rail routes change.

Borders change.

Wars and political conditions change.

Always check current information before attempting a long international overland route.

Take the Long Way

Suppose you wanted to travel from London to Istanbul.

You could fly.

Or you might travel through cities and landscapes along the way.

London.

Paris.

Vienna.

Budapest.

Bucharest.

Istanbul.

Suddenly transportation is no longer what happens between experiences.

It is the experience.

The same idea can be applied almost anywhere.

Singapore through mainland Southeast Asia.

Cape Town through southern Africa.

Buenos Aires toward Patagonia.

Vancouver across Canada.

Lisbon toward Istanbul.

The important question is not always:

How quickly can I get there?

Sometimes it is:

What might I discover if I don’t?

Sleep Somewhere Interesting

Where you sleep can change the entire character of a journey.

Consider a hostel.

A campground.

A small guesthouse.

A locally run homestay.

A sleeper train.

A ferry cabin.

Many hostels provide inexpensive accommodation, shared kitchens and common spaces where travelers meet.

Many now offer private rooms as well as dormitory beds.

Hostelling International is a long-established global network of hostelling organizations.

And then there is camping.

Sometimes the least expensive room has the best ceiling.

A tent can make it possible to stay in extraordinary places for very little money.

Always follow local camping rules and respect private land and fragile environments.

Travel by Bicycle

A bicycle changes the scale of the world.

Distances become real.

Hills become very real.

Villages that would disappear beneath an airplane become lunch stops.

Warmshowers is a worldwide hospitality community created specifically for touring cyclists.

Traveling cyclists can connect with people in the cycling community along their journeys.

Go Somewhere You Have Never Heard Of

Paris is wonderful.

So is Rome.

Go.

But something interesting happens when you stop recognizing all the names on the map.

Open one.

Move away from the capitals.

Look at islands.

Look at border towns.

Look at roads that stop at the sea.

Look at railways heading somewhere you have never considered.

Ask:

What is there?

Wikivoyage is a free, non-commercial worldwide travel guide produced collaboratively by travelers.

It includes destinations, itineraries, phrasebooks and travel topics.

Atlas Obscura is particularly useful for discovering unusual natural, cultural, historic and sometimes wonderfully peculiar places.

Follow a Season

The poem says:

Chasing seasons in and out of clouds

So why not?

Travel does not have to be organized around countries.

Follow something.

Sometimes the best itinerary is not a list of places.

It is an idea.

Cross an Ocean Slowly

There is perhaps no better way to remember that the world is large.

Ferries continue to connect islands, coastlines and countries around the world.

A ferry journey allows you to watch one shore disappear and another eventually appear.

There is a fundamental difference between knowing intellectually that an ocean is enormous and actually crossing part of one slowly.

When planning ferry journeys, use current local ferry operators wherever possible because routes and schedules change frequently.

Travel Alone Sometimes

Solo travel can initially feel uncomfortable.

Then something changes.

Nobody else decides where you eat.

Nobody else decides when you leave.

Nobody else says:

“Why would we go there?”

You become more approachable because there is nobody beside you to talk with.

You learn to ask for help.

You learn that being alone is not necessarily the same as being lonely.

And you learn something useful:

You can arrive somewhere where you know absolutely nobody

and be all right.

Travel With Someone Sometimes

Then again:

A shared memory is a wonderful thing.

A road missed together.

A terrible hotel.

A magnificent sunset.

A disagreement over directions.

A meal that becomes family mythology.

There is no correct way to be itinerant.

Travel alone.

Travel together.

Just travel kindly.

Stay Long Enough to Be Bored

There is another danger in itinerancy.

Moving so quickly that everywhere becomes scenery.

Three countries this week.

Four cities next week.

Picture.

Picture.

Picture.

Gone.

There is value in occasionally staying until something ceases to be exotic.

Find a grocery store.

Do laundry.

Learn which café has the good chair.

Take the same bus twice.

Notice the person who opens the shop every morning.

The purpose of traveling widely is not to skim the surface of the world.

It is to discover how deep the surface goes.

Count Less

Countries can be counted.

Experiences cannot.

There is pleasure in keeping track of where you have been.

Maps are fun.

Lists are fun.

A new island can still make an itinerant soul grin.

But beware of turning the world into a scoreboard.

A person who has deeply known three places may have traveled farther in some important sense than someone who has passed through ninety.

Collect memories.

Collect friendships.

Collect misunderstandings.

Collect changed opinions.

Collect stories.

The passport stamps can come along for the ride.

Pack Less

It is difficult to wander freely while dragging your house behind you.

For many journeys, you need surprisingly little.

The less you carry, the easier it becomes to walk from the station, change plans, board the ferry, climb the stairs, and sail on.

Learn Five Words

Before arriving somewhere, learn at least:

And perhaps:

Delicious.

Fluency is not required.

Effort is noticed.

Language is one of the smallest doors into another person’s world.

Open it.

Go With Humility

The itinerant soul is a guest.

Do not expect the world to reorganize itself around you.

Dress differently when respect requires it.

Ask before photographing people.

Learn what is sacred.

Learn what is rude.

Spend locally when you can.

Do not bargain someone into poverty for the pleasure of winning fifty cents.

Respect wildlife.

Respect fragile environments.

Respect people’s homes.

Leave places as you found them, or perhaps a little better.

The privilege of seeing the world carries a corresponding obligation:

Do not damage what you came to admire.

Before You Go

Wonder is important.

So is common sense.

Before an international journey, check:

IATA maintains a Travel Centre for checking international travel-document requirements.

Requirements can depend on nationality, passport, transit points, destination, length and purpose of visit, and they change often.

The itinerant soul can be spontaneous.

The itinerant soul should not be foolish.

Let the Road Change You

There is little point in seeing the world if you insist that everything in it confirm what you already believed.

Travel will occasionally make you uncomfortable.

Good.

Someone’s idea of dinner may surprise you.

Someone’s religion may confuse you.

Someone’s political assumptions may be completely different from yours.

Someone with very little may be enormously generous.

Someone living in a place you were warned about may make you feel welcome.

The point is not to agree with everyone.

The point is to discover that the world is larger than the version of it you carried in your head.

An Itinerant’s Toolkit

Questions for an Itinerant Soul

A Community of Itinerant Souls

Perhaps someday this can become more than a page.

A little meeting place for people wandering around the world.

Where are you now?

Where should we go?

What place surprised you?

Who did you meet?

What did the road teach you?

A postcard from the road does not need to be long.

Sometimes a few sentences are enough.

Closing Thoughts by Pemba Umoja

Some of my earliest travels were on a shoestring budget with a backpack and tent.

On the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, I camped for only a few dollars a night next to an expensive resort.

I walked the same beach as the guests at the resort. I enjoyed the same ocean. And at night, we looked up at the same stars.

Travel doesn’t need to be expensive.

To me, the world is like one body. If you enjoy only one place, it can be like spending your whole life looking at the palm of your hand.

The palm may be beautiful.

But why not explore the rest?

The world is one whole, filled with extraordinary beauty.

Go out and see it.