Travel as a political act

For most people, travel is seen as a leisure activity, an escape from their reality. Those who travel are either said to be really adventurous or just really rich and have “nothing” else to do with their money. To me, Travel is all about exploring and finding oneself. This is because when you travel, you get out of your comfort zone. This gives you the opportunity to truly discover yourself for example your strengths, how creative you are, what you are able to do in case of a crisis and many more. That is why according to me travelling brings more maturity than any other activity.

A lot of people tend to think that the most important aspect of travelling is the bragging rights you get over your friends when you tell them stories about the places that you have visited. But travel can also be seen as a political act. When we travel, first and foremost we act as ambassadors for our countries but most important is the perception of the outside wotld that we bring back home with us. Because the people we tell our travel stories soley depend on our view to come to conclusions about the outside world, it is important that we paint the right picture. The question then becomes how do we do this? First and foremost we have to rid ourselves of our biases. Biases cloud our judgements in that instead being objective about your experience and actually enjoing it, we tend to be preoccupied with trying to find situations and instances that confirm our biases. It is therefore important that we paint the right picture of the places that we travel to.