For a while, travel was a kind of escape from a mundane life. I’d travel after breakups; after job endings; after heavy projects that had worn me down. Travel was a reset button, a palette cleanser, a way of washing off discomfort and replacing it with stimulation, and curiosity, and lightness. Travel was a kind of free space; a container for possibility, and an opportunity to remember something forgotten.
Earlier than that, I travelled to overcome a fear of the world. I remember feeling lost on my family’s first trip out of Britain. I was unsure of myself, unclear on the rules and risks. I didn’t want to feel that way: scared of places that were different to those I knew; suspicious of people who were different to me. I decided to travel to snap my body out of that response, to see if I could teach myself that the world wasn’t a place to be afraid of. I wanted to feel at home everywhere, if I could.
Later, for a while, I started taking that mission to extremes. I’d travel with a naïve sense of being a kind of peace envoy, a humanitarian, booking flights to far off lands as an act of resistance against the idea of ‘otherness’. I called myself a ‘global citizen’. I started a blog. It was the naughties, and I wasn’t the only one.
For a while, I’d travel not for tourism, but for education. I felt fuelled by purpose, publishing words about places that were misunderstood, on the edges of conflict or recovering from rebellion, trying to remind people that these cities on the nightly news were real. I’d find fixers that could take me behind the lines and across border walls. Into townships and refugee camps. I’d write those stories, building a belief that tourism was for the privileged, even though it’s a privilege I’ve enjoyed more than most.
Watching the bombardment of Gaza right now, I remember sitting in a cafe in Tel Aviv as rockets flew in over the border, and no one batting an eyelid. I remember how the landscape of the West Bank was so deeply portioned up into zones and settlements, that it seemed as if the Israeli population there was intent on living on top of the Palestinian one. And having seen that, it’s easy to imagine how a people forced to live that way might become defeated at some soul-level, or instead, fight back.
But travel was also a search for highlights. A thing to do when wonder became scarce, as an antidote to a loss of awe. I’d seek out the wilder places, the islands where the stars never ended, the tropical beaches where the rain came down in sheets. I’d travel to feel right up close to life, to feel the pulse of the world, until eventually I felt grateful. Others, I’d travel just to feel something, anything at all would do. Both seemed like good reasons to make the trip.
Looking back, I’ve had fair few love affairs while travelling. Athens, Singapore, Austin, Rome. On the road, in that container of possibilities, it’s easy to fall in love. To see the best in someone, and in yourself. After the riots in Athens, a man I knew invited me to walk the city with him til dawn, telling each other our life stories. At a conference in Austin, a friend and I sat in a fairy-lit garden, our conversation edging ever closer to a declaration. On a girls’ weekend in Paris, I heard my first genuine ‘ooh la la’. Far from home, it’s easy to dive into the romance of it all, safe in the knowledge that the ending will be clean, saving weeks of agonising once the magic wears thin.
For a while, I resisted travel. Covid made life smaller, and in that bubble new roots grew between my heart, my feet, and British Isles I was born in. I found myself railing against my past self — the one that was convinced that Britain was boring, and pleasant, and altogether too convenient to provoke any real sense of wonder. I sought out forgotten stone circles and tech-free islands and stories of Celtic warrioresses. I wanted travel to reconnect my spirit to this land, to these stories - to feel myself more rooted here. Sensing that my addiction to escaping the island had also eroded some crucial sense of my belonging.
And I’ve wrestled with the ethics of travel; whether it’s possible to love the world so much that we’d rather harm it than give it up altogether. A kind of abusive relationship, where I tell the world it’s beautiful and then full its lungs with toxins. And then I tell myself the planes are flying anyway, with or without me, so who am I hurting really? It’s an unsatisfactory detente. A guilt I’ve become comfortable accommodating. And yet, I travel less now. Which is to say I still travel more than anyone in my lineage ever has.
But these days, when I travel, I travel for connection. To spend solid, quality time with friends whose lives have taken different directions; to reconnect with those who used to be part of my every day. Living alone, solo travel has less of a pull than it once did, and the joy of a trip has more to do with the collectiveness of it, the group meals and shared experiences, the getting up together and asking ‘what shall we do today?’ The place matters less, the people matter more. I’m immersing myself not in a country, but in the camaraderie of a shared adventure. Nourishing those deeper bonds that can wear thin when life gets fast.
I heard someone say once that they travel so that on their deathbed, they have this rolodex of incredible memories to sooth them. I hope this will be so for me too, although I feel more often that I forget my travels too soon. Unless I’m prompted by a person, a smell, a question, I’m not sure I’ve actually been anywhere beyond the place I’m currently in. As if travels evaporate the moment I touch down back in Blightly.
Other times, I wonder how travel has changed me, with different places and cultures drawing out parts of myself that would have remained dormant had I never made the trip. I remember running around Rome in summer dresses and dancing til dawn in Ibiza clubs, practicing hot yoga in Indonesian yoga shalas and star-gazing on desert islands, and realise how those versions of me rarely find expression in rainy London. And I feel grateful I’ve had the chance to be those people too, even if just for a week or so.
And so I travel for them. And for me. And for the versions of me I don’t know yet.
I’ve travelled to make life bigger. I’m still not sure if that’s a good enough reason.
Perhaps life wouldn’t be just as big if I’d gone deep in one place instead of wide in a hundred of them.
But I travel all the same.
And I wonder why you travel. Why any of us do. And how life would have been different, if we hadn’t.