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travel T While ruminating on humanity’s desire to get out and see the world, writer and fancy hotel enthusiast Laura Agnew has, despite her better judgement, fallen into an existential hole of wanderlust. The cure is pan-fried dumplings. o begin this story by acknowledging the pandemic that underpins everyday life would be lazy writing. Even a tongue-in-cheek remark about how everything you read these days starts with a statement of unprecedented-ness is done to death. So forget everything I just said, while I tell you all about my holiday to Japan. My newly minted husband and I woke in our serene suite at Hoshinoya Tokyo on our last day in Japan; we had spent the last three-and-a-half weeks drinking whisky highballs in smoky jazz bars, eating our way through my starred places on Google Maps, and shopping for vintage clothes, coffee-table books and natural wine from Miyagi Prefecture. We’d visited galleries, soaked in onsens, ridden bikes through back streets under the watchful eye of Mount Fuji, traipsed around Osaka looking for a particular vintage camera (my husband’s request), spent [redacted] hours translating skincare labels (my request), and queued for Harajuku Gyozaro. As we stood in that line for the best, freshest, cheapest gyoza in town (again), we had the feeling that we’d done the whole holiday very right. I have spent many hours reminiscing about that holiday, and approximately twice as many planning my next one in the three years since. And while some friends scoffed when I told them about my favourite lockdown game – planning daily itineraries in faraway places – I know plenty of others who have taken their Type-A travel bug to the next level, booking multiple, elaborate holidays for this year (but always with the all-important free cancellation box ticked). We have all felt the sting of staying put recently, and it makes you wonder… why do we feel such a compulsive need to travel? It sure as hell isn’t getting any easier (and let’s all agree to turf the phrase “it’s the journey, not the destination” because multiple nasal swabs do not a pleasant journey make). And yet, despite all the hurdles, we continue to hack our annual leave days, DM hotel inspo to our friends and organise group trips on endless WhatsApp chats. We are itching to get back out into the world, even though, in our daily lives, we’re so conscious of the risks every interaction poses. But travel offers something of intangible value. It offers us the opportunity to overcome all of our fears in one giant leap. “There’s nothing more exciting and rewarding than becoming an explorer in your own way,” says author Michael Brein, who has a PhD specialising in the psychology of travel. “That’s why we’re travelling; it does something to us. We become more of the people we want to become.” Travel punctuates our lives with moments of growth, change and realisation that are otherwise harder or slower to come by. Self-improvement in your day-to-day life is far more incremental, while travel is an often fleeting but all-consuming experience – synapses firing – that results in a changed person on the other side. We help our brains with that transformation by contextualising what we see. You may be winding up a mountain road in Gran Canaria and think it looks like the road to your cousin’s place in the Noosa Hinterland, or discover that the Lower East Side cafe you drop into has the same vibe as your go-to place at home. These callbacks are a protective behaviour, says Brein, allowing us to toe the line between discovery and familiarity. We instinctively seek out these touchpoints to find the confidence to sink deeper into a foreign place. Of course, few things are more likely to stick with you than the people you meet along the way; unless you go full Thoreau, human connection is typically at the heart of travel. From the flight attendant who sneaks you an extra pillow (or the jerk in front who puts his seat way back), to the tour guide, enthusiastic local, fellow lost traveller or difficult man at the car hire counter – while travelling, we have more interactions than we realise. And, good or bad, they tend to stick. “After all is said and done, what you’re left with, most of your memories, are the people that you made a connection with,” says Brein. “It’s the making of these connections that moves you forward.” And moving forward is exactly what we want to do now. But for some, being grounded has facilitated – or perhaps forced – a shift in perspective. Katie McKnoulty is a former digital nomad and co-founder of brand and marketing agency The Light Studio. She believes travel is about wanting to experience all that life has to offer; that experiencing different cultures helps you evolve. “I think when we evolve ourselves, everyone around us benefits too because we bring those experiences and new ways of seeing the world back with us. We integrate it into our lives and disseminate it where we live. Travel has given me the gift of personal evolution.” Ironically, for the past three years McKnoulty has lived in the tiny hilltop village of Fratte Rosa, in Italy’s central Marche region, immersed in nature and enjoying produce grown and made by her own community. “My view on travelling has definitely been reformed in recent years. I lived the digital nomad life for about five DAV I D J O N E S . C O M 25

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