why we travel pico iyer summary pdf

Why We Travel Summary in English Class 12

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Table of Contents

Introduction

This chapter is written by Pico Iyer and addresses the question about why do humans travel. The writer delves into the reasons that make travelling a pleasurable activity. He quotes some great writers and also cites his own travel experiences.

Travelling as a Liberating Experience

The writer begins by stating that the primary reason for travelling is that it acts as a liberating experience. One loses oneself in travel. There are no burdens of everyday life and no responsibilities of our personal or professional life hold us back. So, there are no inhibitions while travelling.

A traveller leaves his beliefs and certainties at home and opens himself to newer possibilities. While travelling, we are not recognized by our professions or our social standing, that is, we are freed of inessential labels. Therefore, we freely follow our impulses while travelling.

Travelling as A Search for the Self

Travel provides the much needed respite from our busy lives. The hustle and bustle of our hectic schedules drain away our spirit to live. Travelling gives us a renewed spirit to live life to the fullest. We begin to pay attention to one spiritual needs. Each time we travel, we question our beliefs and reconsider our opinions. Thus, travelling compels us to think and reflect on our notions.

Travel, therefore, enriches our knowledge of our own selves as it makes us explore the unexplored recesses of our mind and understand our own moods. The quietude and tranquillity that travel offers helps cause a kind of spiritual awakening. That is to say, that when we travel outside, we also travel inside ourselves. We explore the vast expanse of our inner selves.

Travelling to Enrich our Perspectives

When we travel to unknown places and meet new people, we get exposed to their culture. This gives us a deep understanding of humanity. Travelling makes us more kind and empathetic. The horizons of our thought process broaden and we gather multiple perspectives.

We begin to understand that our perspectives are not universal but are only limited to us. The writer cites words of Marcel Proust who aptly said that travelling is not always about visiting new places but seeing them with new eyes or simply through fresh perspectives.

Exposure to the Realities of the World

Travelling does not only show us scenic beauty and breath-taking landscapes but also exposes us to the harsh realities of the world. Only when we leave the comforts of our homes, do we see the hardships of the other people in the world. Our misconceptions about their lives are done away with.

We come to understand that the terrains like mountainous or deserts which looks so pleasing aesthetically, are actually difficult places to live in. We are thereby prevented from thinking of them as mere abstractions. This way, we travel to rescue ourselves from such misconceptions.

Travelling Enables Cultural Exchange

When a person travels, he takes along with him not only a luggage but also his beliefs and values. This enables a cultural exchange between travellers and the natives. The writer, for example, says that he always takes Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto and brings home woven ikebana baskets. Sometimes, it is not only cultural artefacts but even dreams that get exchanged or transported in travelling.

Travelling as a Return to Our True Selves

Our modern lives and the rat race for success corrupt our visions for life. But while travelling, we tend to carry the basic minimum belongings with us. Hence, we discard all that does not seem essential. This way, we get rid of our obsession for material possessions.

Travelling Makes Us Fall in Love with Life

The writer says that as we travel, we are born again. By this he implies that travelling gives us new purposes and motivation. We begin to appreciate life. Also, travelling brings out the child in a traveller. Thus, the experience of travelling gives us the innocent eyes with which we see the world anew and afresh. The writer believes that each time he returns after a tour, he keeps thinking of that place and revisiting it through the photographs and his diary entries, just like a person in love.

Adventure over Monotony

The confines of our homes make life seem monotonous and dull. Travel provides the adventure and thrill that excites us. In the words of the great writer Albert Camus, “what gives value to travel is fear”. And this fear demands us to be more alert and active.

Travelling Makes us Question the Fixity of Identities

While travelling, a person visits many places and meets many people. He absorbs certain elements of various places and its people. One’s identity, therefore, does not remain fixed or singular. A traveller acquires a curious amalgam of identities of various languages and cultures. The writer quotes Sir Thomas Browne who said that “We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.” This implies that we carry multitudes within us and no human is confined to one singular identity.

This way, Pico Iyer concludes that travelling is essential to keep the human mind active. It prevents the soul from getting exhausted due to the boring routine of everyday life. It keeps a check on our prejudices. Travelling reminds us that the world is too vast and complex, just like the vast expanse of the human inner self.

For life to remain interesting and for enthusiasm to never fade, it is important that one remains wakeful, receptive and willing to face the world in all its strangeness and unfamiliarity. Travelling achieves this end for us.

Analysis of Pico Iyer’s Why We Travel

Introduction: the deeper layers of travel.

In today’s fast-paced world, travel is not just about ticking off destinations on a checklist. It is about discovering the soul of travel, and nobody captures this spirit better than Pico Iyer. In his thought-provoking essays and books, Iyer delves deep into the essence of our wanderlust, revealing the transformative power of travel. With a precise and insightful writing style, Iyer takes us on a journey of self-discovery through his own experiences and reflections. He challenges our notion of time and place, urging us to embrace the beauty of stillness and the art of being present. From his encounters with monks in remote Himalayan monasteries to his explorations of cultures across the globe, Iyer shows us that the true meaning of travel lies not in the external but in the internal exploration. In this comprehensive analysis of Pico Iyer’s thoughts, we dive into his most influential works, dissect his ideas, and explore how they resonate with our own travel experiences. Join us as we uncover the profound wisdom that can be found in the pages of Iyer’s writing and embark on a journey to discover the soul of travel.

The allure of travel often conjures up images of physical movement across landscapes and continents, yet beneath the surface lies an intricate tapestry of experiences that transcends mere transportation. Pico Iyer, a distinguished travel writer and essayist, delves into this notion, suggesting that beneath the act of journeying lies what he terms the “soul of travel.” This concept encapsulates the profound impact that travel can have on our inner selves. It’s not just about changing geographical locations; it’s about embarking on a transformative journey where the destinations mirror the depths of our souls. Iyer’s concept introduces the notion that each journey can be a pilgrimage of self-discovery, unveiling layers of meaning beyond what initially meets the eye.

Transformation through Travel: The Journey Within

Iyer’s perspective on travel reaches far beyond the superficial notion of a mere change of scenery. He posits that travel is a catalyst for personal transformation, a transformative experience that extends beyond the physical journey. Beyond the outward journey, travel becomes an exploration of the self, offering an opportunity for introspection and profound self-realization. By immersing oneself in diverse cultures, landscapes, and experiences, travelers undergo a metamorphosis. The encounter with the unfamiliar challenges preconceived notions, encourages personal growth, and fosters a sense of adaptability. This perspective redefines travel as a vehicle for inner evolution, a journey where travelers return not only with memories but also as changed individuals. Through Iyer’s lens, each voyage becomes a chapter in the ongoing story of personal growth.

The Solitary Path: A Voyage of Introspection

In a world that often glorifies constant connection and interaction, Iyer highlights the transformative role of solitude in the travel experience. Solitude, while traveling, becomes a cherished companion that encourages genuine connections—with both the surroundings and oneself. Away from the noise and demands of everyday life, travelers find space for introspection, a unique opportunity for self-discovery. The moments of solitude provide an unfiltered communion with nature, culture, and personal thoughts. Iyer emphasizes that through solitude, we can truly engage with the essence of a place and our emotions, resulting in a deeper understanding of our experiences. In this context, solitude becomes a guiding light to exploring the depths of both external landscapes and the intricate terrain of the human spirit.

Redefining “Home”: An Emotional Connection

Iyer’s travel narratives transcend the conventional boundaries of “home.” He suggests that home isn’t confined to a physical location but rather is a state of mind—a connection that transcends borders and geographical markers. Drawing from his rich multicultural experiences, Iyer presents home as an emotional tie that resonates across various places. His perspective invites us to consider that the sense of belonging can be found in the relationships, memories, and cultures we encounter during our journeys. As he weaves his narratives, the idea of home evolves into a dynamic concept that reflects the interconnectedness of the human experience itself, challenging the notion that home is a static entity confined to a singular space.

The Dual Impact of Technology: Enhancing and Distancing

In the era of rapid technological advancement, Iyer delves into the paradoxical relationship between technology and travel experiences. While technology brings seamless connectivity, access to information, and opportunities to share experiences with the world, it can also potentially detach us from the present moment. He encourages travelers to strike a delicate balance, advocating for the use of technology as a tool to enhance, not overshadow, our experiences. Iyer’s insights urge us to reflect on the nature of our engagement with technology. By embracing technology as a means to complement our journeys rather than define them, travelers can maintain an authentic connection with the essence of a place while navigating the digital age.

The Essence of Presence: Savoring the Journey

Amidst the frenetic pace of modern life, Iyer advocates for the timeless practice of being fully present while traveling. He believes that immersing oneself in the present moment enriches the travel experience in profound ways. Iyer champions the art of savoring each encounter, encouraging us to absorb the beauty of our surroundings, engage in meaningful interactions, and cultivate genuine connections. Through this lens, the true essence of travel transcends the mere act of visiting destinations; it lies in collecting moments of authenticity and experiencing the journey in its entirety. By being present, travelers amplify the significance of their journey, and the ordinary transforms into the extraordinary.

Cultural Immersion: Connecting Through Diversity

Cultural immersion stands at the core of Iyer’s travel philosophy. He contends that fully immersing oneself in foreign cultures not only broadens horizons but also fosters empathy and understanding. Engaging with local customs, traditions, and ways of life breaks down barriers, dispels stereotypes, and encourages authentic human connections. Iyer’s narratives resonate with a call to step outside comfort zones, embrace diversity, and build bridges of empathy through shared experiences. In his writings, cultural immersion emerges as a potent tool for cultivating a global perspective and fostering a deeper connection with the world and its inhabitants.

Travel’s Role in Personal Growth: An Ever-Evolving Journey

Pico Iyer masterfully intertwines the themes of travel and personal growth in his writings. For him, travel isn’t solely about exploring geographical landscapes; it’s a profound journey into the uncharted territories of one’s own being. The challenges faced during travel prompt resilience and adaptability, while encounters with different cultures and unfamiliar environments encourage self-discovery. Iyer’s philosophy underscores the symbiotic relationship between travel and personal evolution, highlighting that every journey, whether near or far, offers an invaluable opportunity for growth and self-exploration. Through Iyer’s eyes, each trip becomes an ongoing exploration of both the external world and the inner self, a continuous narrative of self-discovery and development.

Embracing the Soul of Travel: A Final Revelation

Pico Iyer’s insights weave a rich tapestry of travel experiences that extend far beyond the realm of geography and sightseeing. In his intricate exploration of transformation, solitude, the concept of home, the impact of technology, the importance of presence, cultural immersion, and personal growth, Iyer provides readers with a comprehensive view of the multifaceted nature of travel. His musings invite us to delve into the soul of travel, to embrace journeys as opportunities for introspection, connection, and growth. By embracing the essence of travel as envisioned by Iyer, travellers embark on a journey that transcends the ordinary and ushers them into the realm of boundless exploration—one that intertwines the external and internal, the unfamiliar and the known, and ultimately, the continuous evolution of the human spirit.

The concept of the “soul of travel” that Iyer proposes calls for a shift in perspective, encouraging us to explore with intention, to engage with authenticity, and to approach our travels as a transformative odyssey. It prompts us to be present not only in the places we visit but also within ourselves, inviting us to listen to our inner voices and engage with the world from a place of profound awareness.

In conclusion,

Pico Iyer’s insights on travel beckon us to embrace the soul of travel—a journey that extends far beyond the external voyage. It’s an invitation to embark on a path of self-discovery, cultural understanding, and personal growth. Through transformation, solitude, the concept of home, the impact of technology, the essence of presence, cultural immersion, and personal growth, Iyer’s thoughts serve as a guide for those seeking a deeper connection with the world and themselves.

As we navigate our own journeys, let us heed Iyer’s wisdom and delve into the layers of experience that travel offers. Let us remember that each encounter, each place, and each moment has the potential to shape us in ways both subtle and profound. Through the lens of Pico Iyer’s insights, we can transcend the notion of travel as a mere logistical endeavor and embrace it as a transformative passage—one that enriches our lives, expands our horizons, and awakens the soul to the beauty of the world and the richness of our own inner landscapes.

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Why We Travel

Hands down, Pico Iyer’s “ Why We Travel ” is my favorite travel essay. Mr Iyer has a way of distilling the essence behind wanderlust & discovery that I find incredibly insightful & deeply authentic. It is a must read.

From the Salon article:

Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past or future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to interpretation. We even may become mysterious — to others, at first, and sometimes to ourselves — and, as no less a dignitary than Oliver Cromwell once noted, “A man never goes so far as when he doesn’t know where he is going.”

There are, of course, great dangers to this, as to every kind of freedom, but the great promise of it is that, traveling, we are born again, and able to return at moments to a younger and a more open kind of self. Traveling is a way to reverse time, to a small extent, and make a day last a year — or at least 45 hours — and traveling is an easy way of surrounding ourselves, as in childhood, with what we cannot understand. Language facilitates this cracking open, for when we go to France, we often migrate to French, and the more childlike self, simple and polite, that speaking a foreign language educes. Even when I’m not speaking pidgin English in Hanoi, I’m simplified in a positive way, and concerned not with expressing myself, but simply making sense.

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Why We Travel

Travel Stories: In a classic essay, Pico Iyer explores the reasons we leave our beliefs and certainties at home to see the world with open eyes

04.27.09 | 11:47 AM ET

W e travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. The beauty of this whole process was best described, perhaps, before people even took to frequent flying, by George Santayana in his lapidary essay, “The Philosophy of Travel.” We “need sometimes,” the Harvard philosopher wrote, “to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

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I like that stress on work, since never more than on the road are we shown how proportional our blessings are to the difficulty that precedes them; and I like the stress on a holiday that’s “moral” since we fall into our ethical habits as easily as into our beds at night. Few of us ever forget the connection between “travel” and “travail,” and I know that I travel in large part in search of hardship—both my own, which I want to feel, and others’, which I need to see. Travel in that sense guides us toward a better balance of wisdom and compassion—of seeing the world clearly, and yet feeling it truly. For seeing without feeling can obviously be uncaring; while feeling without seeing can be blind.

Yet for me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle. In that regard, even a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet (in Beijing) or a scratchy revival showing of “Wild Orchids” (on the Champs-Elysees) can be both novelty and revelation: In China, after all, people will pay a whole week’s wages to eat with Colonel Sanders, and in Paris, Mickey Rourke is regarded as the greatest actor since Jerry Lewis.

If a Mongolian restaurant seems exotic to us in Evanston, Ill., it only follows that a McDonald’s would seem equally exotic in Ulan Bator—or, at least, equally far from everything expected. Though it’s fashionable nowadays to draw a distinction between the “tourist” and the “traveler,” perhaps the real distinction lies between those who leave their assumptions at home, and those who don’t: Among those who don’t, a tourist is just someone who complains, “Nothing here is the way it is at home,” while a traveler is one who grumbles, “Everything here is the same as it is in Cairo—or Cuzco or Kathmandu.” It’s all very much the same.

But for the rest of us, the sovereign freedom of traveling comes from the fact that it whirls you around and turns you upside down, and stands everything you took for granted on its head. If a diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism), a passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism). And the first lesson we learn on the road, whether we like it or not, is how provisional and provincial are the things we imagine to be universal. When you go to North Korea, for example, you really do feel as if you’ve landed on a different planet—and the North Koreans doubtless feel that they’re being visited by an extra-terrestrial, too (or else they simply assume that you, as they do, receive orders every morning from the Central Committee on what clothes to wear and what route to use when walking to work, and you, as they do, have loudspeakers in your bedroom broadcasting propaganda every morning at dawn, and you, as they do, have your radios fixed so as to receive only a single channel).

We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home. And we travel to fill in the gaps left by tomorrow’s headlines: When you drive down the streets of Port-au-Prince, for example, where there is almost no paving and women relieve themselves next to mountains of trash, your notions of the internet and a “one world order” grow usefully revised. Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology.

And in the process, we also get saved from abstraction ourselves, and come to see how much we can bring to the places we visit, and how much we can become a kind of carrier pigeon—an anti-Federal Express, if you like—in transporting back and forth what every culture needs. I find that I always take Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto, and bring woven ikebana baskets back to California; I invariably travel to Cuba with a suitcase piled high with bottles of Tylenol and bars of soap, and come back with one piled high with salsa tapes, and hopes, and letters to long-lost brothers.

But more significantly, we carry values and beliefs and news to the places we go, and in many parts of the world, we become walking video screens and living newspapers, the only channels that can take people out of the censored limits of their homelands. In closed or impoverished places, like Pagan or Lhasa or Havana, we are the eyes and ears of the people we meet, their only contact with the world outside and, very often, the closest, quite literally, they will ever come to Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton. Not the least of the challenges of travel, therefore, is learning how to import—and export—dreams with tenderness.

By now all of us have heard (too often) the old Proust line about how the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes. Yet one of the subtler beauties of travel is that it enables you to bring new eyes to the people you encounter. Thus even as holidays help you appreciate your own home more—not least by seeing it through a distant admirer’s eyes—they help you bring newly appreciative—distant—eyes to the places you visit. You can teach them what they have to celebrate as much as you celebrate what they have to teach. This, I think, is how tourism, which so obviously destroys cultures, can also resuscitate or revive them, how it has created new “traditional” dances in Bali, and caused craftsmen in India to pay new attention to their works. If the first thing we can bring the Cubans is a real and balanced sense of what contemporary America is like, the second—and perhaps more important—thing we can bring them is a fresh and renewed sense of how special are the warmth and beauty of their country, for those who can compare it with other places around the globe.

Thus travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty. For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitably travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we’d otherwise seldom have cause to visit.

On the most basic level, when I’m in Thailand, though a teetotaler who usually goes to bed at 9 p.m., I stay up till dawn in the local bars; and in Tibet, though not a real Buddhist, I spend days on end in temples, listening to the chants of sutras. I go to Iceland to visit the lunar spaces within me, and, in the uncanny quietude and emptiness of that vast and treeless world, to tap parts of myself generally obscured by chatter and routine.

We travel, then, in search of both self and anonymity—and, of course, in finding the one we apprehend the other. Abroad, we are wonderfully free of caste and job and standing; we are, as Hazlitt puts it, just the “gentlemen in the parlour,” and people cannot put a name or tag to us. And precisely because we are clarified in this way, and freed of inessential labels, we have the opportunity to come into contact with more essential parts of ourselves (which may begin to explain why we may feel most alive when far from home).

Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past or future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to interpretation. We even may become mysterious—to others, at first, and sometimes to ourselves—and, as no less a dignitary than Oliver Cromwell once noted, “A man never goes so far as when he doesn’t know where he is going.”

There are, of course, great dangers to this, as to every kind of freedom, but the great promise of it is that, traveling, we are born again, and able to return at moments to a younger and a more open kind of self. Traveling is a way to reverse time, to a small extent, and make a day last a year—or at least 45 hours—and traveling is an easy way of surrounding ourselves, as in childhood, with what we cannot understand. Language facilitates this cracking open, for when we go to France, we often migrate to French, and the more childlike self, simple and polite, that speaking a foreign language educes. Even when I’m not speaking pidgin English in Hanoi, I’m simplified in a positive way, and concerned not with expressing myself, but simply making sense.

So travel, for many of us, is a quest for not just the unknown, but the unknowing; I, at least, travel in search of an innocent eye that can return me to a more innocent self. I tend to believe more abroad than I do at home (which, though treacherous again, can at least help me to extend my vision), and I tend to be more easily excited abroad, and even kinder. And since no one I meet can “place” me—no one can fix me in my resume—I can remake myself for better, as well as, of course, for worse (if travel is notoriously a cradle for false identities, it can also, at its best, be a crucible for truer ones). In this way, travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simply (even when staying in a luxury hotel), with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance.

This is what Camus meant when he said that “what gives value to travel is fear”—disruption, in other words, (or emancipation) from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide. And that is why many of us travel not in search of answers, but of better questions. I, like many people, tend to ask questions of the places I visit, and relish most the ones that ask the most searching questions back of me: In Paraguay, for example, where one car in every two is stolen, and two-thirds of the goods on sale are smuggled, I have to rethink my every Californian assumption. And in Thailand, where many young women give up their bodies in order to protect their families—to become better Buddhists—I have to question my own too-ready judgments. “The ideal travel book,” Christopher Isherwood once said, “should be perhaps a little like a crime story in which you’re in search of something.” And it’s the best kind of something, I would add, if it’s one that you can never quite find.

I remember, in fact, after my first trips to Southeast Asia, more than a decade ago, how I would come back to my apartment in New York, and lie in my bed, kept up by something more than jet lag, playing back, in my memory, over and over, all that I had experienced, and paging wistfully though my photographs and reading and re-reading my diaries, as if to extract some mystery from them. Anyone witnessing this strange scene would have drawn the right conclusion: I was in love.

For if every true love affair can feel like a journey to a foreign country, where you can’t quite speak the language, and you don’t know where you’re going, and you’re pulled ever deeper into the inviting darkness, every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where you’re left puzzling over who you are and whom you’ve fallen in love with. All the great travel books are love stories, by some reckoning—from the Odyssey and the Aeneid to the Divine Comedy and the New Testament—and all good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.

And what this metaphor also brings home to us is that all travel is a two-way transaction, as we too easily forget, and if warfare is one model of the meeting of nations, romance is another. For what we all too often ignore when we go abroad is that we are objects of scrutiny as much as the people we scrutinize, and we are being consumed by the cultures we consume, as much on the road as when we are at home. At the very least, we are objects of speculation (and even desire) who can seem as exotic to the people around us as they do to us.

Comments (23)

Pico Iyer is the author of several books about his travels, including Video Night in Kathmandu , "The Lady and the Monk," "The Global Soul" and "Sun After Dark." His most recent travel book, The Open Road , describes 33 years of talks and adventures with the 14th Dalai Lama.

More by This Author:

The Photographer and the Philosopher
Lover’s Moon
The Perfect Traveler

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23 Comments for Why We Travel

PeggyCoonley/SerendipityTraveler 04.27.09 | 10:49 PM ET

Thanks for reposting this stellar travel essay by Pico Iyer . May we continue to travel the landscapes and hidden gems of our heart bringing with us peace, and leaving love as our footprint.

Vera Marie Badertscher 04.28.09 | 3:39 PM ET

Such a beautiful paean to the urge to travel. Thank you.

Bobby 04.29.09 | 2:21 PM ET

I enjoyed your insightful article. It inspires me to write myself, perhaps more so to travel and experience this beautiful world through my own lenses both via canon and the optic nerve….

Tim Patterson 04.30.09 | 11:53 AM ET

I love this essay so much. It’s a staple for some Where There Be Dragons student travel programs - instructors read the essay to students at the start of the trip.

Thanks for republishing and congrats on the anniversary - here’s to 80 more years of World Hum.

Roger 04.30.09 | 1:14 PM ET

This essay is a masterpiece.

Carlo Alcos 04.30.09 | 8:55 PM ET

Happy 8th birthday! This is my first read of this essay - it blew my mind. It’s everything I know in my heart but can’t come close to expressing. Thanks!

unstranger 05.01.09 | 5:01 AM ET

Intelligently written and so insightful.

Travelanthropist 05.01.09 | 11:28 AM ET

This is such a wonderful essay on the inner journey, discovery, open-mindness—all bundle up in an activity we can do call travel.

Edna Hickey 05.08.09 | 8:14 AM ET

Wow!! Every place I have ever been i.e. Kalalau Trail in the darkness, Bryon Glacier (off the trail), driving on the Seven Mile Bridge, just woke up!! Thanks for taking me there again. I’m excited to read more and will share this journey with others!!

shakester 05.08.09 | 12:20 PM ET

thanks for resposting for those of us unlucky enough to have not read this before. Absolutely wonderful, at almost 1am, reading this in near silence, and feeling both excitement and calm within.

here’s to many more years!

pax 05.27.09 | 1:21 PM ET

this made my day. thank you for reposting it. I definitely have to look for other of Pico Iyer’s writings.

Danielle 06.17.09 | 12:09 AM ET

I am so happy I have found this essay. Iyer has reassured and aided me on a clearer journey to express my experiences from travel. It is exciting to know there are others who find travel just as intoxicating as I do. Thank you.

Johnny B 10.07.09 | 4:05 PM ET

I travel because I need to be in touch with the dynamics of nature. Urban dwellers face an imminent risk of getting entangled in plastic life. A life that has come to define our unpleasant existence. Most of us can’t think beyond it. The laptops are babies and the internet is a pamper. Believe me, life is much more that that. Much more beautiful and mystical than what you could imagine at home.

I travel because it gives me a sense of freedom. A sense that is hard to come by in this utterly boorish urban landscape. I don’t mean to suggest that Karachi is boring. No, it’s not. It’s just that I don’t like it here any more. I want more of something new. The difference need be quantifiable in terms of pleasure bits and love bytes.

The exoticism of lands and of seas and of mountains is yet another charmer for me. But landscapes in isolation can be dreadful at times. They need animation. It is here that the best part of traveling comes in - the birds, the animals and the humans.

Johnny B CEO, Halo Electronic Cigarette Company

Ryan 01.04.10 | 5:28 PM ET

James L. Moore 01.12.10 | 2:45 PM ET

Congratulations on your 8th anniversary! And thank you for re-posting Iyer’s essay and re-minding all of us of why we travel. Of why it is important to reach out beyond our own personal space, reach out beyond our borders, reach out beyond our cultural expectations.

Pico Iyer delves into the actual meaning of travel—- as getting outdoors can stave off ‘Nature deficit’, traveling can stave off ‘cultural deficit’.

Mary 08.11.10 | 12:33 PM ET

I can say that travelling is like getting into new reality, even if you travel to the same place it is always something new there. This essay inspires to expand new horizonts!

Kelly Harmon @hiptraveler 11.13.10 | 1:27 AM ET

intelligently written and infinitely relate-able by all travelers.

keep discovering! ~cheers, @hiptraveler

Nina 11.13.10 | 2:59 AM ET

I love this article By Pico Iyer. Thank you World Hum for republishing it. So beautifully written.

Heather Bosely 11.17.10 | 11:23 AM ET

Thank you for republishing this article! What a joy to read and hear expressed so clearly the wonders of travel to be experienced by really seeing.

Boomergirl 11.22.10 | 12:03 PM ET

Made my Monday morning!

deepa gupta 11.29.10 | 8:44 AM ET

profound writing,immensely strong and impressive-your beginning of this article is truly deadly.thanks for sharing this .

Raghuvir 12.04.10 | 6:31 AM ET

Loved this article. Hope you republish more of such articles.

WhiteApple 12.22.10 | 9:10 AM ET

I’ve watched a big amount of videos on the issue on this site http://www.tubesfan.com and got my own vision of the philosophy of travelling. Well, if a person is too fond of travelling, in my humble opinion it means that they are infantile, this is a direct evidence of the immaturity of thinking, selfishness, irresponsibility if you wish, though in the best meaning of those qualities.)) Most people travel to escape their daily lives. Unfortunately, when they come back to reality, their problems, family, friends, and issues they face are still there. Travel to enjoy it, meet new people, get rid of your baggage, learn about culture and history, and enjoy yourself.

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An Interview with Pico Iyer, The Contemplative Traveler

For writer Pico Iyer, travel is a spiritual experience that shakes up our usual certainties and connects us to a richer, vaster world. Iyer talks with editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod about his new book, “The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise,” and his eclectic contemplative practice.

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Melvin McLeod: You write about travel as a transformative spiritual experience, even a spiritual practice. How do we approach travel in order to benefit from it spiritually?

Pico Iyer: I’ve always seen travel as a means of transformation. Part of its beauty involves not just leaving your home, but leaving far behind your habits and the self that you recognize at home. When you’re in a foreign place, you can’t define yourself in the ways you’re used to, and therefore there’s a chance to become a slightly different self.

I’m always seeking out those places that will overturn my assumptions, push me beyond what I think I know, and send me back a slightly different person from the one who left home. Of course, one doesn’t have to physically travel to be liberated from oneself, but it’s certainly a shortcut. If we’re in the streets of Varanasi, we can’t orient ourselves in familiar ways and we’re freed from our illusions of knowledge and of control.

The world is always richer than our ideas of it.

The ways that travel humbles us are also the ways it releases us. When I’m at home, I’m living according to plan, trapped within my preconceptions. But put me down in Jerusalem, and reality is coming at me from all directions. Travel strips me of the comfortable notions I hide behind. It cuts through projections and illusions very quickly.

These days it’s so easy to get the world secondhand, through small screens and in two dimensions, so there’s a greater need than ever to encounter the world in all its confounding intensity.

For me, travel is a confrontation with reality. It’s like when the Buddha left his gilded palace to confront head-on the realities of sickness, old age, and death. I left my comfortable job in New York City when I was twenty-nine, and I wasn’t unaware of the fact that my first name is Siddhartha, that my parents named me after the Buddha. I felt I was living in something of a gilded palace, and I wanted to meet the world head-on.

It seems to me that a lot of the problems we have today—racism, xenophobia, toxic nationalism—are because so many people have never been exposed to different peoples, cultures, and communities beyond their immediate world. Basically, they’ve never travelled. Do you think travel can be an antidote to the pervasive fear and hostility toward the other we see around the world?

Fear, I think, is always based on ignorance. But it’s a hard, vicious cycle to cut through. When I’m sitting at home and I think about Syria or Iran or North Korea, I focus on everything about them that’s different from my world. But as soon as I get off the plane in Damascus or Tehran or Pyongyang, I’m confronted with the human realities I have in common with the people in those countries. It’s only by keeping the world at a distance that we can preserve that illusion of difference. But as soon as we meet others in the flesh, we’re reminded of all the things we share.

The world is always richer than our ideas of it. I called my new book The Half Known Life to remind myself that it’s only when we’re at home and in our heads that we assume we’re so different from others. But when we’re actually in the streets of the world, we see all the ways we’re united with others that are beyond differences in custom or language.

The good news is that one doesn’t have to travel far to encounter the world. Go to Toronto or New York or San Francisco, and all the cultures of the world are on your doorstep. The most important division we see now is between the city and the countryside. Our cities largely belong to a multicultural, global, twenty-first-century reality, while the countryside is often more caught up in the old black-and-white definitions of the nineteenth century.

In a typical classroom today, there are children from many places and traditions, and I think that’s the signature quality of the twenty-first century. It’s true that nationalism is on the rise around the world, but I think that’s because it’s on the run. It senses that the world is incrementally losing its old black-and-white definitions and borders and turning into a multicultural, multicolored swirl. Certainly populism is shouting very loudly at the moment, but largely because the world is accelerating in a very different direction.

Peole in Varanasi, India, people bathing in the Ganges.

Can we ever know life fully—through travel or education or contemplation—or is the half-known life inherently part of the human condition? We long to know life fully, but can we ever?

I love that question. My prejudice is that not knowing is a permanent condition—and it’s a condition to embrace. Life doesn’t offer answers, and our lives are defined by how readily we embrace the state of answerlessness. Our lives will be made by what we do with the myriad things we can’t understand.

Don’t-know mind and not knowing as a form of intimacy are basic principles in Buddhism, particularly in Zen. That makes all the sense in the world to me. I’ve found that everything essential that determines my life—falling in love, seeing my house burn down, suddenly having the world stopped by a pandemic, stepping out onto the terraces of the Potala Palace in Lhasa and feeling myself lifted to a state that I didn’t know was inside me—all of these I can’t begin to explain, and they would only be reduced if I tried to put them into words or ideas.

I feel that our permanent condition is akin to being in a little tent in the Himalayas late at night. We may have a lantern or a flashlight, but otherwise we’re surrounded by the vast darkness of the nighttime sky, pinpricked with stars. We’re surrounded by things far greater and larger than we are, and how ready we are to accept them will define how happy our lives will be.

The phrase “the half known life” comes from Herman Melville. The poignancy of Melville’s life was that he was always trying to come to answers. What’s the meaning of life? Does God exist? What’s the relation of God to evil? I think there’s no answer to those, and he, by seeking answers to unanswerable questions, ended up walking sleepless through the streets of New York City, forgotten and unable to come to rest.

Unlike Melville, I feel that we need to come to rest in the awareness of everything that we can’t hope to understand.

The subtitle of the book is “ In Search of Paradise. ” Many of the places you go in search of paradise, such as Jerusalem, Northern Ireland, and Iran, are places with deep religious traditions and ideals of paradise. But they’re also places where religion itself is the source of great conflict. How do you experience the disconnect between their religious ideals of paradise and the reality of conflict?

For me, the disconnect is between the reality and the thoughts of reality I have, which will always be much smaller.

Jerusalem is a perfect example. It is the home of three great monotheisms, each beautiful in its own right. Yet the city of faith has been the city of religious conflict for more than two thousand years.

When I go there—and I’m not a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew—there’s something in the air, something in those ancient stones, that moves me almost to tears. Every morning I walk through the predawn dark to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There, I sit in this little ragged space where there’s nothing but a rocky ledge and a glittering candle, and I feel transformed.

I feel that religious longing, the sense of something beyond us, is very real. But the theories and ideologies we create around that longing only cut us in two. What we do in the name of religion creates tribes of “us” versus “them,” “chosen” versus “unchosen” people. Whereas religious longing reflects the sense that there’s something there that is surely universal to us all.

I think my greatest teacher is silence. Silence seems to dissolve me and open me up to something much wider. I think everybody who’s been on a retreat, whether it’s a Zen retreat or time at a contemplative Catholic monastery, partakes of the same silence and clarity.

As you said so perfectly, I go in the search for paradise to places of great conflict and difficulty. This book was written during the pandemic, when all of us were living with death breathing down our necks, and my sense was that the only paradise I could trust was one I would find right in the middle of the real world, and in the face of death.

Here in Japan, where I sit now, they often talk about living joyfully in a world of sorrows. Sorrows are nonnegotiable—they’re a part of everybody’s life. But the fact of sorrows doesn’t have to preclude joy. And the fact of conflict in Jerusalem doesn’t have to preclude real moments of beauty and surrender and wonder.

Elaine Pagels, the great scholar of religions, said that this book is just a Buddhist parable, and she’s probably right. I suppose the book is my way of saying that we can’t hope to live in a world without suffering or difficulty or challenge. But none of those things means the absence of hope, of possibility, and the chance for kindness.

The Dalai Lama came from an obscure, impoverished place on the far side of the mountains to suddenly become the global friend of us all. This is one of the things that really gives me hope in the world. Two of his great friends were Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel. One day Havel was in prison, and weeks later he was president of his country; Archbishop Tutu had never had a chance to vote for sixty-two years, and then he became one of the leaders of a post-apartheid South Africa.

These are wonderful reminders not to be stuck in despair or depression. Because the world is as suffused with miracles as it is with unpleasant surprises.

Woman in wedding dress standing beside deer.

You’ve written beautifully in Lion’s Roar about your own spiritual practice, which draws on different contemplative traditions. What ties these contemplative practices together for you?

This goes back to what we were saying about not needing Religion with a capital R—where I believe this, and everybody else believes something else—but trying to find that common core all the contemplative traditions share.

The contemplative tradition doesn’t need to define itself as belonging to East or West or this school or that school. As somebody who doesn’t have a Buddhist practice, I’m deeply grateful for what I have learned from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. As someone who’s not Catholic, I’ve completed more than a hundred retreats with my Benedictine friends at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California, where I benefit hugely from the monks’ kindness and devotion.

I went to an Anglican school in England, and we had to go to chapel twice a day. We had to sing the Lord’s Prayer in Latin on Sundays. So by the time I was twenty-one, I’d had enough crosses and hymns to last me a lifetime. Christianity was the one tradition I wasn’t open to in the ways I might be open to the Zen tradition or Sufism.

So it has been a perfect blessing to end up spending so much of my life with these Christian monks, who are very grounded and decent people. That has also given me the chance to learn from Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Father Thomas Keating, and other great Christian contemplatives. I’m glad I’ve been able to learn from these Christians, whom otherwise I think I would have written off.

In terms of my life, growing up between many cultures has been a challenge, because I haven’t been rooted in a single one. But it’s also been a blessing, because I’ve been able to learn from all of them. For example, I always try to spend autumn here in Japan, which is, for me, a deeply Buddhist country. My wife is Buddhist, and I met her in a Zen temple in Kyoto. I think the Buddhist tradition looks more closely at suffering, impermanence, and loss than any of the other traditions I’m acquainted with. So if you’re thinking about how to live in the midst of death, how to love in the face of loss, the Buddhist tradition has something to offer, whether or not you have a Buddhist practice.

Then, I feel that the light and sense of affirmation and resurrection of the spirit in the springtime is very strong in the Christian tradition. So I tend to spend my springs in the Benedictine Hermitage in California, because the light and the flowering and the celebration that happens in the spring takes full-bodied form there.

So I’m very grateful that Buddhism can teach me about the end of life, and Christianity can teach me about the light within the end.

One of the greatest challenges facing the world is toxic religion. That’s religion that is conflated with nationalism, racism, and forms of aggression and supremacy. It seems to me the best antidote to toxic religion is contemplative practice like yours, which is free from rigid, us-versus-them beliefs and emphasizes universal human experience. But how do we bring more people to the kind of contemplative practice you do when the hard certainties of toxic religion seem so appealing to people?

When I called my book The Half Known Life , it was a way of saying we don’t need certainty and we don’t need hard conclusions. But we probably do need spiritual counsel and wisdom to navigate a world that’s always going to have shadow as well as light.

I think the medical example is a good one. None of us is going to be cured of life. All of us are mortal and no doctor is infallible. All a doctor can offer is her best prescription for the condition she has diagnosed.

I think we all need that kind of expertise in life, which is why we have turned to the great contemplative masters through the ages, why we go on retreat, why we look for teachers. Because we need counsel and we need wisdom, but we certainly don’t need fixed or final truths.

Actually, I think the trend toward contemplative practice is developing very quickly. I think people are more and more exposed to traditions other than their birth tradition. We are aware of many more options than when I was growing up because there are many more teachers in our midst from every corner of the globe.

We take that for granted, but we’re very lucky. When my parents were in college, fewer than two thousand Westerners in the whole of history had set foot in Tibet. Now the wisdom of Tibet is found in every section of the world. Growing up, my parents never imagined they could listen to a Vietnamese Buddhist teacher. Now we have all benefited from the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. How lucky we are that people in every part of the world can meet these amazing bringers of wisdom.

That’s why we’re seeing this developing movement toward contemplative religion. I think the world is moving very quickly beyond borders, in the same way it’s moving beyond fixed identities of every kind.

Your magazine is a perfect example of this. Forty years ago, if Lion’s Roar had existed, it might not have been easy to find people who speak for contemplative practice. Now I’m sure there are more people than you have space for. I feel Lion’s Roar has been chronicling not just the growth but maybe the explosion of this movement.

Pico Iyer Journeys

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How to travel more without going anywhere

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Matthew Cloutier

Sanaz Meshkinpour

Part 5 of the TED Radio Hour episode Stay Resolved

Traveling lets us take in the awe of new places. But author and travel writer Pico Iyer realized he could bring an adventurous spirit to familiar spaces and see local beauty that he had overlooked.

About Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer is an essayist and author, best known for his travel writing. He has written some fifteen books, translated into twenty-three languages. His most recent, released in January of 2023, is The Half Known Life: In Search Of Paradise .

Iyer has written for TIME since 1986 and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, Harper's, and The New York Review of Books. He's also been featured in over 200 other newspapers and magazines internationally.

Iyer was born in England to parents from India, raised in California, and educated at Eton, Oxford, and Harvard. Since 1987, he has been largely based in Western Japan.

This segment of the TED Radio Hour was produced by Matthew Cloutier and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Facebook @ TEDRadioHour and email us at [email protected].

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A Passionate Response to Pico Iyer’s “Why We Travel”

Travel writer Pico Iyer explores the motivations of wayfarers in his article “Why We Travel.” To him, travel is about the enlightenment of an individual and ultimately those around them. I agree wholeheartedly. Iyer points out that “… one of the subtler beauties of travel is that it enables you to bring new eyes to the people you encounter.” He is highlighting the interplay between the traveler and the local—how experience opens the visitor up to unexplored facets of their identity, and how their wonder impacts the country itself.

Much like Iyer discusses in his article, I believe travel is a cobbling of adventure through individual understandings of one’s home country, the country being traversed, and one’s own self; every individual’s unique expectations colors their exploration differently. I travel to challenge myself, so I can be encouraged and allowed to adapt in a place I’m not familiar with. I want to explore new cultures, countries, and, as a result, the different parts of myself that have been stunted from sitting stagnant in place. As Iyer puts it, travel “shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty.” I travel so I can shake off that rust.

Specifically, I hope Spoleto can teach me some of these extrinsic and intrinsic truths, and I hope I can grow as a writer and a person because of it. I plan to approach each element of this opportunity with adaptability and a sponge mentality. I am ardent for everything Italy has to teach me—I want to consume as much culture as I can, food and art alike. I’ve seen Michalangelo’s “David” in person before, and it was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced, so getting to see “The Birth of Venus,” the Medici house and its collection, or anything else would be beyond. I want to immerse myself in and learn the language more, and I’m excited to learn how to articulate my wonder and gained experiences in sharper writing. Throughout the trip, I want to be more spontaneous, adaptable, and approachable to both other people and to new experiences. By the end, I hope to be a more assured and indulgent version of myself. As Iyer says, “… the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.” I am eager and ready for Italy to show me that different light, that crooked angle.

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Why We Travel

Why We Travel – Pico Iyer

Table of Contents

“Why We Travel” is an essay written by Pico Iyer that explores the motivations and benefits of travel. Iyer argues that travel is not simply a way to escape from the stresses of daily life, but rather a means to gain perspective and understanding about oneself and the world. Iyer draws on his own experiences as a world traveler, explaining that travel helps to break down cultural barriers and broaden one’s understanding of the world. He also suggests that travel can help individuals gain a better understanding of themselves and their place in the world, as it allows them to step outside of their familiar surroundings and see things from a new perspective. Additionally, Iyer contends that travel can help individuals develop empathy and compassion for others. He notes that through travel, individuals can witness the hardships and struggles of people in different parts of the world, and this can lead to a greater appreciation of the diversity and richness of human experience. Overall, Iyer’s essay argues that travel is a powerful and transformative experience that can help individuals grow and develop in numerous ways. He suggests that by stepping outside of our comfort zones and embracing the unknown, we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Icebreakers on Why We Travel Std 12

Views on how traveling can be a hobby:.

1. Exploration: Traveling allows you to explore new cultures, landscapes, and lifestyles, turning it into a hobby of continuous discovery. 2. Adventure:For thrill-seekers, traveling offers a variety of adventurous activities, making it an exciting and adrenaline-pumping hobby. 3. Learning: Every new place provides an opportunity to learn about history, art, and different ways of life, turning traveling into an educational hobby. 4. Relaxation:Some consider traveling a hobby for relaxation, as it offers a break from routine, allowing individuals to unwind and rejuvenate. Benefits of Traveling:

– Teaches carefulness and caution. – Promotes organizational skills and preparation. – Encourages promptness and quick decision-making. Expectations When Traveling:

(a) Food should be delicious and available whenever hungry. (b) Immersive cultural experiences. (c) Safe and comfortable accommodation. (d) Opportunities for memorable adventures. Various Types of Travels:

Solo Travel: Embarking on journeys alone, promoting independence, self-discovery, and the freedom to explore at one’s own pace.
Group Travel: Travelling with friends, family, or organized groups, fostering shared experiences and creating lasting memories.
Adventure Travel: Catering to thrill-seekers, it involves activities like hiking, rock climbing, or extreme sports in exotic or challenging environments.
Cultural Travel: Focused on immersing oneself in the local culture, including visits to historical sites, museums, and participation in traditional activities.
Luxury Travel: Involves high-end accommodations, fine dining, and exclusive experiences, emphasizing comfort and indulgence.
Business Travel: Undertaken for work purposes, often involving meetings, conferences, and networking, with limited leisure time.
Backpacking: Traveling on a budget, staying in hostels, and prioritizing experiences over comfort, often associated with longer durations and extensive itineraries.
Educational Travel: Centered around learning experiences, such as language immersion programs, study abroad, or attending workshops and seminars.
Cruise Travel: Exploring various destinations while on a cruise ship, offering a combination of travel and onboard luxury amenities.
Ecotourism: Traveling responsibly to natural areas, promoting conservation and sustainable practices while enjoying the beauty of the environment.
Road Trip: Exploring by car, allowing for flexibility in destinations and the opportunity to discover hidden gems along the way.
Volunteer Travel: Combining travel with volunteer work, contributing to local communities and causes while experiencing a new culture.
Medical Tourism: Traveling for medical treatment or procedures, combining healthcare with leisure in different global locations.
Digital Nomad Travel: Working remotely while traveling, taking advantage of technology to explore different destinations while maintaining professional commitments.
Heritage Travel: Visiting ancestral or heritage sites, exploring family roots, and connecting with one’s cultural history.

Activity Set 1on Why We Travel

A1. Write down the views of George Santayana about travelling.

A2.Differentiate: (02).

Differentiate between Tourist and Traveller.

A3. Interpret: (02).

Interpret the statement, “whose riches are differently dispersed.”

A4. Personal Response: (02)

“Travelling broadens our perspective”. Do you agree with the view. Justify your answer with suitable examples.

A5. Language study: (02)

i. For seeing without feeling can obviously be uncaring. (Rewrite the sentence using the Infinitive form of the underlined word)

ii. We travel, initially to lose ourselves and we travel next to find ourselves. (Rewrite the sentence Using,” not only …. but also’)

iii. We travel to open our hearts. (Rewrite the sentence using the “Gerund form” of the underlined word)

A6. Vocabulary: (02)

Find out words from the extract which means the following.

i. Forced to ii. Difficult or unpleasant experience iii. Improper angle

Answers Activity Set 1

A1. Views of George Santayana about travelling:

George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher, believed that travelling is essential for self-discovery and personal growth. According to him, it is not only the destination that matters, but the journey itself. Santayana emphasized the importance of experiencing new cultures and lifestyles, as it helps individuals to broaden their perspectives and gain a better understanding of the world around them. He also believed that one should travel with an open mind and embrace the unknown, rather than trying to cling to familiar customs and beliefs.

A2. Differentiation between Tourist and Traveller:

A tourist is someone who travels for pleasure or leisure, often with a fixed itinerary and a limited amount of time. They tend to stick to popular tourist attractions and activities and may not necessarily engage with the local culture. On the other hand, a traveller is someone who seeks to immerse themselves in the culture of the places they visit. They may have a more flexible itinerary and are often open to new experiences and adventures. Travellers tend to be more curious and adventurous, seeking to explore off-the-beaten-path locations and learn about the local way of life.

A3. Interpretation of the statement, “whose riches are differently dispersed.”

The phrase “whose riches are differently dispersed” suggests that wealth is distributed unequally among different people and regions. It implies that some people or areas may have more economic resources than others. The statement may also be interpreted to mean that there are different types of wealth, not just financial wealth. For instance, one may have cultural or social wealth, which can be spread out in various ways.

A4. Personal response to the view, “Travelling broadens our perspective”:

I strongly agree with the view that travelling broadens our perspective. By travelling to new places, we are exposed to different cultures, customs, and ways of life. This exposure can help us gain a better understanding of the world and appreciate the diversity that exists. Travelling can also challenge our assumptions and biases, forcing us to think critically and question our beliefs. For example, I once travelled to a remote village in South America, where I lived with a host family for a few weeks. This experience not only allowed me to learn about their way of life but also taught me to appreciate the little things in life and to live with simplicity.

A5. Language study:

i. Seeing without feeling can obviously be uncaring. (Rewritten using the Infinitive form of the underlined word):

To see without feeling can obviously be uncaring.

ii. We travel, initially to lose ourselves and we travel next to find ourselves. (Rewritten using,” not only …. but also’):

We travel not only to lose ourselves initially but also to find ourselves.

iii. We travel to open our hearts. (Rewrite using the “Gerund form” of the underlined word): We travel for opening our hearts.

A6. Vocabulary:

i. Forced to – Compelled ii. Difficult or unpleasant experience – Ordeal iii. Improper angle – Oblique

ii. The first great of joy travelling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs.(From the given options find out „Wh‟ question to get the underlined part as an answer.) a) What is the first great joy of travelling? b) What was the first great joy of travelling? c) What will be the first great joy of travelling? d) What is joy of first great travelling?

A6. Vocabulary: (02) Fill in the blanks with a suitable word from the given bracket and rewrite the sentence: (Ignorance, essence, solitude, compassion, assumptions)

Activity Set 2

Read the extract and do all the activities that follow: (12) But for the rest of us, the sovereign freedom of travelling comes from the fact that it whirls you around and turns you upside down, and stands everything you took for granted on its head. If a diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism) a passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism). And the first lesson we learn on the road, whether we like it or not, is how provisional and provincial are the things we imagine to be universal. We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home. And we travel to fill in the gaps left by tomorrow‟s headlines. When you drive down the streets of Port-au-Prince, for example, where there is almost no paving your notions of the Internet and a “one world order” grow usefully revised. Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology. And in the process, we also get saved from abstraction ourselves, and come to see how much we can bring to the places we visit, and how much we can become a kind of carrier pigeon – an anti-Federal Express, if you like – in transporting back and forth what every culture needs. I find that I always take Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto, and bring woven ikebana baskets back to California. But more significantly, we carry values and beliefs and news to the places we go, and in many parts of the world, we become walking video screens and living newspapers, the only channels that can take people out of the censored limits of their homelands. In closed or impoverished places, like Pagan or Lhasa or Havana, we are the eyes and ears of the people we meet, their only contact with the world outside and, very often, the closest, quite literally, they will ever come to Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton. Not the least of the challenges of travel, therefore, is learning how to import – and export – dreams with tenderness

State whether the following statements are True/ False i. According to the writer, we travel in part just to shake up our satisfaction that we seldom have to free at home. ii. We imagine that provisional and provincial things are universal. iii. The writer always brings woven ikebana baskets back to India. iv. We Carry values, beliefs and news to the place.

A2. Explain: (02) Explain the concept of cultural relativism. A3. Interpret: (02) Interpret the statement, “We are eyes and ears of the people.” A4. Personal Response (02) Do you agree with the views expressed by the writer? Justify your answer with suitable examples. A5. Language study: (02) i. Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places. (Rewrite the sentence using the “Infinitive form” of the underlined word) OR (change the degree) i. We can become a kind of carrier Pigeon. (Rewrite the sentence using a modal auxiliary which indicates,” possibility”) A6. Vocabulary: (02) Find out words from the extract which mean the following. i. Regional ii. Confusion/double mind situation iii. Poverty stricken places iv. A set of ideas which form a basis for political economic system

Answers Activity Set 2

A1. State whether the following statements are True/ False: i. According to the writer, we travel in part just to shake up our satisfaction that we seldom have to free at home. True ii. We imagine that provisional and provincial things are universal. True iii. The writer always brings woven ikebana baskets back to India. False iv. We Carry values, beliefs and news to the place. True A2. Explain: The concept of cultural relativism is the idea that a person’s beliefs, values, and practices should be understood and interpreted in the context of their own culture, rather than being judged against the standards of another culture. It recognizes that different cultures have their own unique way of life, and what may be considered acceptable in one culture may not be in another. A3. Interpret: The statement “We are the eyes and ears of the people” means that when we travel to other places, we can act as a source of information and knowledge for the people we meet. We can share our experiences, beliefs, and values, and in turn, learn from their perspectives and experiences. This can help bridge the gap between different cultures and promote understanding and empathy. A4. Personal Response: Personal response may vary. One possible response could be: I agree with the views expressed by the writer. Traveling to different places has helped me broaden my perspective and understanding of different cultures. For example, when I traveled to Japan, I learned about their unique customs and values, such as the importance of harmony and respect in their society. This helped me appreciate and respect their culture, and also helped me reflect on my own beliefs and values. A5. Language study: i. To rescue the humanity of places, travel is the best way we have. ii. We can possibly become a kind of carrier pigeon. A6. Vocabulary: i. Provincial ii. Cognitive dissonance iii. Impoverished places iv. Ideology

Report Writing from New Question Bank

Brainstorming on Why We Travel Std 12 English

Read the first two paragraphs and discuss the need to travel.

Discussion on the Need to Travel: The first two paragraphs likely provide insights into the intrinsic value of travel, highlighting aspects such as personal growth, cultural enrichment, and the unique experiences that come from exploring different places. Traveling often broadens one’s perspective, fosters adaptability, and contributes to a deeper understanding of the world.

(A2) (i) Read the sentence ‘If a diploma can famously ………. in cultural relativism.’ Pick the sentence which gives the meaning of the above statement from the alternatives given below. (a) A diploma certificate can be used as a passport and a passport can be used as a diploma certificate. (b) If one has a diploma, he does not need a passport and if he has a passport, he does not need a diploma. ( c) One can acquire permission to travel to foreign countries for educational purposes based on her academic achievements and travelling to foreign countries enriches one the most regarding the knowledge and wisdom of the world. Write an email to your friends about your proposed trek. You can take help of the following points. You can keep your parents informed about it by adding them in BCC. • A trek in the forest of Kodaikanal • Time and duration • Type of trek (cycle/ motorbike/ walk) • Facilities provided • Last date for registration • Fees

Write an email to your friends about your proposed trek. You can take help of the following points. You can keep your parents informed about it by adding them in BCC. • A trek in the forest of Kodaikanal • Time and duration • Type of trek (cycle/ motorbike/ walk) • Facilities provided • Last date for registration • Fees To : [email protected]

BCC: [email protected]

Subject: Information about proposed treck Hey everyone, I hope this email finds you well! I am thrilled to share some exciting news with all of you. I’m planning a trek in the beautiful forests of Kodaikanal and would love for you to join me on this adventure! Here are the key details: Location: Kodaikanal Forest Time and Duration: The trek is scheduled for [Date] and will last [Number of Days]. It’s going to be an amazing escape into nature, filled with breathtaking views and unforgettable moments. Type of Trek: We have multiple options for the trek—whether you prefer cycling, motorbiking, or a classic walking experience, there’s something for everyone. Facilities Provided: We’ve got you covered! Expect well-planned routes, experienced guides, and all the necessary safety measures in place. It’s going to be a fantastic journey with plenty of opportunities to connect with nature. Last Date for Registration: To ensure everything is well-organized, the last date for registration is [Deadline]. Don’t miss out on this incredible experience—register before the deadline to secure your spot. Fees: The fees for the trek are 5000, which includes accommodation, meals. You can make the payment by Gpay,Phonepay. I’ve also taken the liberty of keeping my parents in the loop about this exciting venture. They’ll be receiving updates along the way. Feel free to reply to this email if you have any questions or need more information. Let’s make this trek an unforgettable experience together! Looking forward to embarking on this adventure with all of you. Best regards, Rahul Anil Bhumare

(ii) Prepare a list of the litterateurs and their quotations mentioned by the writer in the essay.

(iii) ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes.’ – Marcel Proust. Justify with the help of the text.

Marcel Proust Quotation “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes.” implies that true exploration goes beyond physical locations and involves perceiving the world with a fresh perspective. It emphasizes a mindset shift rather than just visiting new places.

(iv) Read the third paragraph and find the difference between a tourist and a traveller as revealed through the complaints made by them.

Difference Between Tourist and Traveler

The third paragraph likely outlines distinctions between tourists and travelers based on the complaints mentioned. Tourists might focus on discomfort and inconveniences, while travelers seek deeper connections and understanding.

(v) Write four sentences with the help of the text conveying the fact that travelling brings together the various cultures of the different parts of the world.

Cultural Integration Through Travel Traveling bridges cultural gaps, bringing people from different parts of the world together. It fosters a global understanding by exposing individuals to diverse traditions. Through travel, various cultures intermingle, creating a rich tapestry of shared experiences. Exploring different parts of the world promotes cultural exchange and mutual appreciation.

(vi) By quoting Camus, the writer has stated that travelling emancipates us from circumstances and all the habits behind which we hide. Write in detail your views about that.

Camus’ Quote on Travel The writer, by quoting Camus, suggests that traveling liberates individuals from their habitual circumstances. This freedom allows for personal growth and a break from routine, enabling individuals to see beyond their usual confines and gain new perspectives.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do we travel?

People travel for various reasons, including exploration, cultural enrichment, relaxation, and adventure. Why traveling is important?

Traveling is important as it broadens perspectives, fosters personal growth, and allows for diverse experiences. Why did people start traveling?

Historically, people started traveling for survival, trade, and exploration. As societies evolved, travel became a means of connecting cultures and exchanging ideas. Why is everyone into traveling?

The popularity of travel is linked to a desire for new experiences, cultural diversity, and a break from routine. Social media also plays a role in fueling travel aspirations. How do we travel?

Traveling can be done by various means, such as planes, trains, cars, or even on foot, depending on the destination and personal preferences. How can I enjoy traveling? To enjoy traveling, be open-minded, embrace local culture, try new foods, and plan a balance between exploration and relaxation. Flexibility and a positive attitude enhance the travel experience.

It was helpful to me thank you so much ☺

Why we travel – Pico Iyer

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.

~ Pico Iyer

Twin wings – joy and sorrow

Why We Travel, by Pico Iyer

(an excerpt)

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. The beauty of this whole process was best described, perhaps, before people even took to frequent flying, by George Santayana in his lapidary essay, “The Philosophy of Travel.” We “need sometimes,” the Harvard philosopher wrote, “to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

I like that stress on work, since never more than on the road are we shown how proportional our blessings are to the difficulty that precedes them; and I like the stress on a holiday that’s “moral” since we fall into our ethical habits as easily as into our beds at night. Few of us ever forget the connection between “travel” and “travail,” and I know that I travel in large part in search of hardship — both my own, which I want to feel, and others’, which I need to see. Travel in that sense guides us toward a better balance of wisdom and compassion — of seeing the world clearly, and yet feeling it truly. For seeing without feeling can obviously be uncaring; while feeling without seeing can be blind.

If a Mongolian restaurant seems exotic to us in Evanston, Ill., it only follows that a McDonald’s would seem equally exotic in Ulan Bator — or, at least, equally far from everything expected. Though it’s fashionable nowadays to draw a distinction between the “tourist” and the “traveler,” perhaps the real distinction lies between those who leave their assumptions at home, and those who don’t: Among those who don’t, a tourist is just someone who complains, “Nothing here is the way it is at home,” while a traveler is one who grumbles, “Everything here is the same as it is in Cairo — or Cuzco or Kathmandu.” It’s all very much the same.

But for the rest of us, the sovereign freedom of traveling comes from the fact that it whirls you around and turns you upside down, and stands everything you took for granted on its head. If a diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism), a passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism). And the first lesson we learn on the road, whether we like it or not, is how provisional and provincial are the things we imagine to be universal. When you go to North Korea, for example, you really do feel as if you’ve landed on a different planet — and the North Koreans doubtless feel that they’re being visited by an extra-terrestrial, too (or else they simply assume that you, as they do, receive orders every morning from the Central Committee on what clothes to wear and what route to use when walking to work, and you, as they do, have loudspeakers in your bedroom broadcasting propaganda every morning at dawn, and you, as they do, have your radios fixed so as to receive only a single channel).

We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home. And we travel to fill in the gaps left by tomorrow’s headlines: When you drive down the streets of Port-au-Prince, for example, where there is almost no paving and women relieve themselves next to mountains of trash, your notions of the Internet and a “one world order” grow usefully revised. Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology.

And in the process, we also get saved from abstraction ourselves, and come to see how much we can bring to the places we visit, and how much we can become a kind of carrier pigeon — an anti-Federal Express, if you like — in transporting back and forth what every culture needs. I find that I always take Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto, and bring woven ikebana baskets back to California; I invariably travel to Cuba with a suitcase piled high with bottles of Tylenol and bars of soap, and come back with one piled high with salsa tapes, and hopes, and letters to long-lost brothers.

By now all of us have heard (too often) the old Proust line about how the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes. Yet one of the subtler beauties of travel is that it enables you to bring new eyes to the people you encounter. Thus even as holidays help you appreciate your own home more — not least by seeing it through a distant admirer’s eyes — they help you bring newly appreciative — distant — eyes to the places you visit. You can teach them what they have to celebrate as much as you celebrate what they have to teach. This, I think, is how tourism, which so obviously destroys cultures, can also resuscitate or revive them, how it has created new “traditional” dances in Bali, and caused craftsmen in India to pay new attention to their works. If the first thing we can bring the Cubans is a real and balanced sense of what contemporary America is like, the second — and perhaps more important — thing we can bring them is a fresh and renewed sense of how special are the warmth and beauty of their country, for those who can compare it with other places around the globe.

We travel, then, in search of both self and anonymity — and, of course, in finding the one we apprehend the other. Abroad, we are wonderfully free of caste and job and standing; we are, as Hazlitt puts it, just the “gentlemen in the parlour,” and people cannot put a name or tag to us. And precisely because we are clarified in this way, and freed of inessential labels, we have the opportunity to come into contact with more essential parts of ourselves (which may begin to explain why we may feel most alive when far from home).

So travel, for many of us, is a quest for not just the unknown, but the unknowing; I, at least, travel in search of an innocent eye that can return me to a more innocent self. I tend to believe more abroad than I do at home (which, though treacherous again, can at least help me to extend my vision), and I tend to be more easily excited abroad, and even kinder. And since no one I meet can “place” me — no one can fix me in my resume –I can remake myself for better, as well as, of course, for worse (if travel is notoriously a cradle for false identities, it can also, at its best, be a crucible for truer ones). In this way, travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simply (even when staying in a luxury hotel), with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance.

This is what Camus meant when he said that “what gives value to travel is fear” — disruption, in other words, (or emancipation) from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide. And that is why many of us travel not in search of answers, but of better questions. I, like many people, tend to ask questions of the places I visit, and relish most the ones that ask the most searching questions back of me: In Paraguay, for example, where one car in every two is stolen, and two-thirds of the goods on sale are smuggled, I have to rethink my every Californian assumption. And in Thailand, where many young women give up their bodies in order to protect their families — to become better Buddhists — I have to question my own too-ready judgments. “The ideal travel book,” Christopher Isherwood once said, “should be perhaps a little like a crime story in which you’re in search of something.” And it’s the best kind of something, I would add, if it’s one that you can never quite find.

For if every true love affair can feel like a journey to a foreign country, where you can’t quite speak the language, and you don’t know where you’re going, and you’re pulled ever deeper into the inviting darkness, every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where you’re left puzzling over who you are and whom you’ve fallen in love with. All the great travel books are love stories, by some reckoning — from the Odyssey and the Aeneid to the Divine Comedy and the New Testament — and all good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.

We are the comic props in Japanese home-movies, the oddities in Maliese anecdotes and the fall-guys in Chinese jokes; we are the moving postcards or bizarre objets trouvés that villagers in Peru will later tell their friends about. If travel is about the meeting of realities, it is no less about the mating of illusions: You give me my dreamed-of vision of Tibet, and I’ll give you your wished-for California. And in truth, many of us, even (or especially) the ones who are fleeing America abroad, will get taken, willy-nilly, as symbols of the American Dream.

That, in fact, is perhaps the most central and most wrenching of the questions travel proposes to us: how to respond to the dream that people tender to you? Do you encourage their notions of a Land of Milk and Honey across the horizon, even if it is the same land you’ve abandoned? Or do you try to dampen their enthusiasm for a place that exists only in the mind? To quicken their dreams may, after all, be to match-make them with an illusion; yet to dash them may be to strip them of the one possession that sustains them in adversity.

That whole complex interaction — not unlike the dilemmas we face with those we love (how do we balance truthfulness and tact?) — is partly the reason why so many of the great travel writers, by nature, are enthusiasts: not just Pierre Loti, who famously, infamously, fell in love wherever he alighted (an archetypal sailor leaving offspring in the form of Madame Butterfly myths), but also Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence or Graham Greene, all of whom bore out the hidden truth that we are optimists abroad as readily as pessimists as home. None of them was by any means blind to the deficiencies of the places around them, but all, having chosen to go there, chose to find something to admire.

All, in that sense, believed in “being moved” as one of the points of taking trips, and “being transported” by private as well as public means; all saw that “ecstasy” (“ex-stasis”) tells us that our highest moments come when we’re not stationary, and that epiphany can follow movement as much as it precipitates it. I remember once asking the great travel writer Norman Lewis if he’d ever be interested in writing on apartheid South Africa. He looked at me astonished. “To write well about a thing,” he said, “I’ve got to like it!”

At the same time, as all this is intrinsic to travel, from Ovid to O’Rourke, travel itself is changing as the world does, and with it, the mandate of the travel writer. It’s not enough to go to the ends of the earth these days (not least because the ends of the earth are often coming to you); and where a writer like Jan Morris could, a few years ago, achieve something miraculous simply by voyaging to all the great cities of the globe, now anyone with a Visa card can do that. So where Morris, in effect, was chronicling the last days of the Empire, a younger travel writer is in a better position to chart the first days of a new Empire, post-national, global, mobile and yet as diligent as the Raj in transporting its props and its values around the world.

In the mid-19th century, the British famously sent the Bible and Shakespeare and cricket round the world; now a more international kind of Empire is sending Madonna and the Simpsons and Brad Pitt. And the way in which each culture takes in this common pool of references tells you as much about them as their indigenous products might. Madonna in an Islamic country, after all, sounds radically different from Madonna in a Confucian one, and neither begins to mean the same as Madonna on East 14th Street. When you go to a McDonald’s outlet in Kyoto, you will find Teriyaki McBurgers and Bacon Potato Pies. The placemats offer maps of the great temples of the city, and the posters all around broadcast the wonders of San Francisco. And — most crucial of all — the young people eating their Big Macs, with baseball caps worn backwards, and tight 501 jeans, are still utterly and inalienably Japanese in the way they move, they nod, they sip their Oolong teas — and never to be mistaken for the patrons of a McDonald’s outlet in Rio, Morocco or Managua. These days a whole new realm of exotica arises out of the way one culture colors and appropriates the products of another.

The other factor complicating and exciting all of this is people, who are, more and more, themselves as many-tongued and mongrel as cities like Sydney or Toronto or Hong Kong. I am, in many ways, an increasingly typical specimen, if only because I was born, as the son of Indian parents, in England, moved to America at 7 and cannot really call myself an Indian, an American or an Englishman. I was, in short, a traveler at birth, for whom even a visit to the candy store was a trip through a foreign world where no one I saw quite matched my parents’ inheritance, or my own. And though some of this is involuntary and tragic — the number of refugees in the world, which came to just 2.5 million in 1970, is now at least 27.4 million — it does involve, for some of us, the chance to be transnational in a happier sense, able to adapt anywhere, used to being outsiders everywhere and forced to fashion our own rigorous sense of home. (And if nowhere is quite home, we can be optimists everywhere.)

Besides, even those who don’t move around the world find the world moving more and more around them. Walk just six blocks, in Queens or Berkeley, and you’re traveling through several cultures in as many minutes; get into a cab outside the White House, and you’re often in a piece of Addis Ababa. And technology, too, compounds this (sometimes deceptive) sense of availability, so that many people feel they can travel around the world without leaving the room — through cyberspace or CD-ROMs, videos and virtual travel. There are many challenges in this, of course, in what it says about essential notions of family and community and loyalty, and in the worry that air-conditioned, purely synthetic versions of places may replace the real thing — not to mention the fact that the world seems increasingly in flux, a moving target quicker than our notions of it. But there is, for the traveler at least, the sense that learning about home and learning about a foreign world can be one and the same thing.

All of us feel this from the cradle, and know, in some sense, that all the significant movement we ever take is internal. We travel when we see a movie, strike up a new friendship, get held up. Novels are often journeys as much as travel books are fictions; and though this has been true since at least as long ago as Sir John Mandeville’s colorful 14th century accounts of a Far East he’d never visited, it’s an even more shadowy distinction now, as genre distinctions join other borders in collapsing.

In Mary Morris’s “House Arrest,” a thinly disguised account of Castro’s Cuba, the novelist reiterates, on the copyright page, “All dialogue is invented. Isabella, her family, the inhabitants and even la isla itself are creations of the author’s imagination.” On Page 172, however, we read, “La isla, of course, does exist. Don’t let anyone fool you about that. It just feels as if it doesn’t. But it does.” No wonder the travel-writer narrator — a fictional construct (or not)? — confesses to devoting her travel magazine column to places that never existed. “Erewhon,” after all, the undiscovered land in Samuel Butler’s great travel novel, is just “nowhere” rearranged.

Travel, then, is a voyage into that famously subjective zone, the imagination, and what the traveler brings back is — and has to be — an ineffable compound of himself and the place, what’s really there and what’s only in him. Thus Bruce Chatwin’s books seem to dance around the distinction between fact and fancy. V.S. Naipaul’s recent book, “A Way in the World,” was published as a non-fictional “series” in England and a “novel” in the United States. And when some of the stories in Paul Theroux’s half-invented memoir, “My Other Life,” were published in The New Yorker, they were slyly categorized as “Fact and Fiction.”

And since travel is, in a sense, about the conspiracy of perception and imagination, the two great travel writers, for me, to whom I constantly return are Emerson and Thoreau (the one who famously advised that “traveling is a fool’s paradise,” and the other who “traveled a good deal in Concord”). Both of them insist on the fact that reality is our creation, and that we invent the places we see as much as we do the books that we read. What we find outside ourselves has to be inside ourselves for us to find it. Or, as Sir Thomas Browne sagely put it, “We carry within us the wonders we seek without us. There is Africa and her prodigies in us.”

So, if more and more of us have to carry our sense of home inside us, we also — Emerson and Thoreau remind us — have to carry with us our sense of destination. The most valuable Pacifics we explore will always be the vast expanses within us, and the most important Northwest Crossings the thresholds we cross in the heart. The virtue of finding a gilded pavilion in Kyoto is that it allows you to take back a more lasting, private Golden Temple to your office in Rockefeller Center.

And even as the world seems to grow more exhausted, our travels do not, and some of the finest travel books in recent years have been those that undertake a parallel journey, matching the physical steps of a pilgrimage with the metaphysical steps of a questioning (as in Peter Matthiessen’s great “The Snow Leopard”), or chronicling a trip to the farthest reaches of human strangeness (as in Oliver Sack’s “Island of the Color-Blind,” which features a journey not just to a remote atoll in the Pacific, but to a realm where people actually see light differently). The most distant shores, we are constantly reminded, lie within the person asleep at our side.

So travel, at heart, is just a quick way to keeping our minds mobile and awake. As Santayana, the heir to Emerson and Thoreau with whom I began, wrote, “There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar; it keeps the mind nimble; it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.” Romantic poets inaugurated an era of travel because they were the great apostles of open eyes. Buddhist monks are often vagabonds, in part because they believe in wakefulness. And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.

The meaning of home – and the joy of traveling

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Riverhead Books, 2023

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Laura albritton, more online by laura albritton.

A Line in the World
Dear Damage
Rooms of Their Own
Autumn Light
For Single Mothers Working as Train Conductors

The Half-Known Life: In Search of Paradise

By pico iyer, reviewed by laura albritton.

Pico Iyer has made a name for himself by writing about his wide-ranging travels and his search for meaning in foreign lands in books like Video Night in Kathmandu and Falling Off the Map . In his latest volume, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise , Iyer embarks on a quest to comprehend , and even find, “paradise.” Iyer is seeking not so much an actual location as an appreciation for what disparate peoples understand by “paradise” or “utopia.” His search takes him to cities as far-flung as Belfast, Varanasi, Jerusalem, Mashhad, and Kandy—all “troubled places.” The perplexing connection between holy sites, faith, and conflict becomes a central preoccupation of the book.

In an interview, Iyer explains that the title, “the half-known life,” refers to “the sense that everything important in life—from love to death, from faith to wonder—lies beyond our grasp,” and that his job “is to try to write lucidly about what’s unfathomable.” Only a writer as accomplished and inquisitive as Iyer could set himself such a daunting task. And while his reflections on religion and conflict are often inconclusive, he conjures up a vivid sense of place and poses provocative questions.

Nowhere is the relationship between holiness and discord more evident than in “The Holy City,” a chapter about Jerusalem. Here, Iyer describes Islamic, Jewish, and Christian sites and believers; in one instance, he observes the tension between two rival camps—Ethiopians and Copts—who have laid claim to the Chapel of St. Michael and “come to [literal] blows over the tiny territory they shared.” Iyer notes that “the fighting was not just between traditions, but within them.” In Jerusalem past and present, the sacred is intertwined with violence; the city’s history is “a cautionary tale, a warning about what we do when we’re convinced we know it all.” Iyer’s judgment, that Jerusalem is a “place where everyday morality and religion part ways,” is damning, but not uncompassionate.

Even as Iyer is occasionally moved by the devotion expressed within Jerusalem’s candlelit shrines, The Half Known Life is free of religious as well as political partisanship. Iyer believes that Israelis and Palestinians “both have fair claim to the land beneath their feet.” A guide named Amir suggests the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is “not a problem …. It’s an issue. A problem you can solve. An issue you have to live with.”

Even with his profound observations, Iyer does not ultimately arrive at satisfactory conclusions about the mysteries of religion and sectarian violence. Despite this shortcoming, Iyer conjures up the locales with deft detail wherever he ventures. In Srinagar, Kashmir, the territory disputed by India and Pakistan and favored by the British Raj, he notes “a jumble of old Hindu temples, crumbling, two-story wooden houses, mosques with pagoda towers, next to tidy cottages that might have been set beside the Thames.” In Mashhad, at the Imam Reza Shrine, he witnesses pilgrims “releasing white doves into the blue-black sky” and “black-turbaned ayatollahs.” Yet these scenes of religious devotion are juxtaposed with disturbing realities. In Iran, he experiences a “surveillance culture,” pervaded by “ta’arof,” the custom of “never saying exactly what you mean.”

Iyer struggles to reconcile the inconsistencies and discord he observes in many “troubled places.” Over breakfast in Sri Lanka, he reads the news of a suicide bombing and a murder “three miles from where I was buttering my toast”: evidence of the ongoing Tamil-Sinhalese conflict. Iyer asks, “What is it about these paradise places … that throws off such a disquieting charge?”

At times, the book descends into bewilderment. In the desolate town of Broome, Australia, Iyer becomes rattled by the stormy weather, dangerous wildlife, and eerie atmosphere. While walking home one day, he is followed by Aboriginal locals and feels menaced: “It didn’t really matter which of us, if either, was in the wrong. This wasn’t my place, and it had been theirs for six hundred centuries or more.” Frightened, he runs to his motel and bolts the door.

If remote Australia is the nadir of Iyer’s quest, then the time he spends with the Dalai Lama in Japan represents its zenith. The author has known and admired the Tibetan spiritual leader for several years. According to Iyer, the Dalai Lama “had no interest in wishful or romantic notions,” and he “never really heard him speak about Paradise (or Nirvana); such ideas could only be a distraction from the possibilities of real life.” The Half-Known Life functions as a refutation of religion’s hunger for paradise, perhaps even of religion itself, especially when Iyer recalls that the Dalai Lama “tried to nudge lay listeners away from religion (and its certainties) towards what he habitually called ‘common experience and common sense and scientific findings.’” In the end, the text leaves us with no real enlightenment about the “unfathomable,” but rather humanity’s intrinsic contradictions and its oftentimes destructive pursuit of moral absolutes. Iyer may not reach any conclusions, but perhaps that is the point: there are questions that cannot be answered but remain worth asking.

Published on May 16, 2023

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Why We Travel Summary in English Class 12

Introduction

Travelling as a Liberating Experience

Travelling as A Search for the Self

Travelling to Enrich our Perspectives

Exposure to the Realities of the World

Travelling Enables Cultural Exchange

Travelling as a Return to Our True Selves

Travelling Makes Us Fall in Love with Life

Adventure over Monotony

Travelling Makes us Question the Fixity of Identities

Analysis of Pico Iyer’s Why We Travel

Transformation through Travel: The Journey Within

The Solitary Path: A Voyage of Introspection

Redefining “Home”: An Emotional Connection

The Dual Impact of Technology: Enhancing and Distancing

The Essence of Presence: Savoring the Journey

Cultural Immersion: Connecting Through Diversity

Travel’s Role in Personal Growth: An Ever-Evolving Journey

Embracing the Soul of Travel: A Final Revelation

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