F
or the last 25 years I have been doing my part to
contribute to the ethos of the tourism industry.
I churn out travel guides that get tourists where
they want to go and make their trip as easy as possible.
I find them somewhere nice to stay and eat, and sum
up the local castle or cathedral in a few paragraphs of
succinct historical and architectural detail.
But at the back of mind has always been the same
thought: shouldn't travel be a fulfilling, life-enhancing
experience rather than merely an agreeable but empty
pleasure? That is, after all, why I got into travel writing
in the first place.
My earliest journeys were life-changing experiences.
They were made in the '70s, before religion, politics and
war became entwined in the way they are now. And
also long before the mobile phone, the internet, GPS,
budget flights and the availability of cheap city breaks
transformed travel into something you don't have to
think too hard about. A trip then took commitment and in
Any trip is an
opportunity not
to wallow in the
shallows but seek
out the depths of
human experience;
not to empty your
head of meaning
but to fill it up.
return for my investment I expected to get rewards in the
form of excitement and learning .
– are not the facts and figures pertaining to it, or what
and on the way took local transport into the middle of
the experts opine – but how it affects the individual
a then peaceful Afghanistan to see the giant Buddhas
visitor. What I would want as a visitor to, say, the Mayan
at Bamiyam (deliberately destroyed by the Taliban in
temples of Palenque, or the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul are
2001). Later I lived for several weeks in the cheapest,
clues as to how to read the building in a way that makes
spartan hotel you can imagine, down the road from the
sense to me.
magnificent Taj Mahal in Agra.
The difficulty in getting to such places, and of being
person and with the time and circumstances of the visit
but there are certain ways which help the stonework talk
made the experience of being there all the more powerful
to you.
out.
any sacred building with an open, receptive mind; with
respect, reverence and awareness; with a readiness to
another way to travel. I was paid to spend time studying
perceive other dimensions; there will be an interaction
the pyramids of Mexico, the sacred sites of Jordan and
between the two of you, 21st C human traveller and the
the Holy Land and the great cathedrals of Europe in great
building which is an ancient repository of spiritual wisdom.
detail. Conscientiously but always on a tight schedule, I
There is a double benefit to be obtained from
rolled up at each sight with a clipboard and checklist in
travelling with a mystical rather than material attitude.
hand determined to answer every last question. I needed
One is that many tourist attractions are also living, sacred
hard facts. I wasn't there to dream about anything
sites and you cannot fully comprehend them without
speculative, nebulous or difficult to describe in words.
understanding the metaphysical motivation behind them.
my readers. I had become skilled at reducing great sacred
You will only ever see half a church if you take it entirely
at face value.
buildings to handy summaries but in the process I wasn't
The other benefit is that you won't come back home
saying anything about the essence of the place: how it
the same person. Something will have changed ever so
felt being there and the thoughts it inspired in me.
slightly because of the contact with the place you have
I realised that I was getting things the wrong way
around. The data was easy to collect and broadcast but
•
From experience, I am convinced that if you approach
In the 1990s, my travel guide work introduced me to
But I began to wonder whether I wasn't short-changing
DIGIMAG
The experience of any place varies from person to
so utterly disconnected from everything familiar to me,
and I did not return home the same pe