hodoph

The love to travel.

In Spring 2019, I, along with my mother, toured Iceland, the mainstream “trap” of the world in recent years. A testament to nature’s beauty and well worth the experience to be sure, but one thing that stuck out, rather like a thorn, was the disregard tourists had for the surroundings. I’m speaking from very specific experiences here, but I’m sure many have experienced the mobs of tourists with megaphones booming, buses cramming, etc. The act of indulging in one’s own delight, without enough regard on how it affects others.

It annoyed my tour guides sometimes. They wanted us to take in nature’s quiet, not disrupt it with cheers. They wanted us to safely admire the caves, not scurry away for dangerous photo perches. Even the act of just taking photos was oft spent longer than looking at what we traveled so far for. It reminded me then that there are so many people who have not traveled the world before, yet I take it for granted to experience another’s culture, food, and hospitality as a given corollary of modern aviation.

That’s not to decry misfortune, though. In the end, many of the tour guides and citizens I saw were happy. They loved their home enough that they didn’t need to travel, despite our generation’s obsession with it. Patriotism perhaps, but I think it spoke to how Iceland has become globalized. They don’t have to be the pioneers of exploring other nations and the associated risks; rather, explaining the history and wonders of Iceland to the foreigners from different nations, lands, and languages were enough for them to experience, in some magnitude, another part of the world.

I say I love to travel, but perhaps it isn’t necessarily travelling I’m in love with: like the tour guides and artisans I met in Iceland, maybe it’s just the commemoration of nature and our very human achievements, or hiccups, standing by it.