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
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