Why do I travel?
#1 Curiosity
A deep driving force that push me travelling is simply curiosity.
Curiosity to discover places, history, people, food that I don’t know yet. Travel is not the only way to increase my knowledge about the world. I’m aware of that. I know that I could learn anything by taking classes, reading books, asking to quora or searching on google. I know that I could have a close look at the world in a click, on streetview. It sounds easy and fast but it’s not the good way for me to learn.
I’ve never had problems in learning things that I cannot directly experience: math functions, thermodynamics laws or the neutron transport equation. I loved, and I was pretty good with, invisible but provable theories. On the other hand, I was really bad at geography and I’ve never loved history. I could barely locate cities in my region — I still have big doubts about the ones I haven’t visited yet — and I’ve always hated learning about war battles dates or the rise and fall of ancient empires.
Surprisingly, once I started travelling, I suddenly became interested in history and my geography skills improved dramatically! I started thinking seriously that we should completely change the way we teach these subjects at school. Certain kind of brains, including mine, are able to properly register information about geography and history only directly experiencing them.
It’s not the fact that I don’t believe information given to me by other people — even if there’s a lot of people speaking about things they don’t know at all. It’s the fact that I need to get proofs by myself, as for math theorem that I can demonstrate, with my pencil, on my notebook.
It’s the need to look closer, deeply and with my own eyes to truly feed my brain, and my soul. I need to cross the Pont des Arts to record that the Seine river crosses Paris, I need to feel dizzy in Mexico City because of the altitude to remember that it is located 2,240 meters above the sea level, I need to drive a motorbike on the left in Thailand to learn that Britain had an important influence on the history of the country.
In this highly digital era we can have a lot of experiences just sitting on our chairs in front of our computer or with a VR headset on. It’s amazing that we can be at the top of Mount Everest in a click. But, that is not enough for me.
I want the smell coriander approaching a market in Vietnam, I want to sweat without moving in Macapa, I want to look up to a giraffe hoping she’ll look back down at me so that our eyes could meet for half of a second. I want to physically experience the world and learn from it.
