Why I Travel?

posted on: Sep 26, 2018

By: Habeeb Salloum/Arab America Contributing Writer

When it was suggested to me that I write a piece as to ‘why people travel’, I thought at first that the topic was somewhat uninteresting. However, when I sat back and recalled my travel experiences and the thousands of people whom I had met in my extensive meanderings throughout the world, the topic began to become more and more inviting.

Like a kaleidoscope of moving colours, past travel events began to crystallize in my memory. It was as if the suggestion had opened in me a ‘Pandora’s Box’. I was excited and thrilled as I began to inscribe past episodes which I had jotted in my notebooks during my many travel assignments and vacations.

In the late autumn of 1996, I was dining at Rancho Leonero, a holiday resort located at the tip of southern Baja California- Mexico’s westernmost state. Turning to my table companion, John Attaway, who hailed from the US state of California, I asked, “Why do you come here for a vacation? Isn’t this part of Mexico just an extension of your state?” John did not hesitate, “It’s the fishing. Here, it’s the best in the world. You can have your sun and beaches! To me fishing is the top enjoyment in life.”

The next day, as I watched John, in mounting excitement, haul up fish after fish in the Sea of Cortez, I thought of another type of exhilaration I had encountered in Cuba’s Escambray mountains. As we walked single file on a jungle trail, Maria, a young Spanish woman walking before me would, in great enthusiasm, point out the names of the birds, flowers and trees which, at times, formed a canopy over our heads.

Stopping to survey the splashing waters of a small waterfall, I asked her, “How come you know so much about the jungle and its creatures?” She looked at me somewhat inquisitively, “We all must know about, and protect our natural world. Once gone, this panorama of nature will never return.” She continued, “It’s my life! For my vacations, I always travel to resorts which offer trips to the wild. Cuba is the place for me. Much of the money made from these excursions is spent by the government in protecting the environment.”

Maria’s reason for travel is in sharp contrast to that of Trevor and Sarah, a Toronto couple who my daughter and I met at our hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital. In the ensuing days, I never saw them on any of the excursions, or even outside the hotel. One day, during dinner, I asked them, “I’ve never seen you on any of the tours. How do you spend your time?”

Sarah smiled and replied, “We sleep most of the day and spend the night in the casino downstairs. That’s what we go on holidays for – to gamble.” Trevor carried on, “Our favourite spot is Las Vegas. We never travel to any place which doesn’t have a casino.”

Sometime later, I compared the reason why this couple travelled, to that of an old French woman, wandering by herself in Morocco. I was sitting in the Moroccan Tourist Office in Agadir, the country’s top resort, when an aged French woman walked in, “I need the bus schedule and the names of the hotels in Tafraout. I get excited when I think of that enchanting pink town. The official looked at the frail-looking woman, “It’s a mountainous trip and the buses are always crowded. I suggest you take an organized excursion.” The woman’s eyes blazed, “Are you saying I’m too old? I’m only 93 and 1 feel like a young woman. For the last ten winters, I have travelled through Morocco by buses and trains. I love your countryside and its people. I’ve eaten in their homes, slept on their dirt floors and even helped in the housework. And you think I can’t travel by bus to Tafraout?”

The official seemed stunned as he handed her a few leaflets. Apparently, he could not believe that this weak-looking woman enjoyed the harsh ways of the countryside – a life from which most Moroccan peasants want to escape.

This woman’s desire to live with the masses had little relation to one of my sojourns in Granada – the last illustrious capital of the Moors in Spain. After breakfast at the luxurious Parador Nacional San Francisco, a former 15th century convent which was once an Arab palace, I sat down to enjoy a coffee with a gentleman that I had met the day before. In its captivating atmosphere, said to be the most magical of all the hotels in Spain, I began to discuss with Khalid Ahmed Al Rawi, a citizen from the United Arab Emirates, the Arab/Muslim era in the Iberian Peninsula.

I had thought that no one could be as totally under the spell of Moorish Spain as myself. However, in Khalid I found one who was much more enamoured with that rich Arab legacy. He appeared to be glassy-eyed as he spoke, “I have travelled many times to this beautiful country and I will come again and again. It’s not the beaches or the cabarets that I come for, it’s the remains of my people which draw me.”

He went on as if in a dream, “I travel to live in history. I want to see and feel the atmosphere of every Arab castle and palace in Spain. I want to join in the Moros y Christianos festivals such as that in Petrer and taste the excitement of the flamenco – these events which carry the aura of the Arabs in Spain. This is my yearly vacation – a trip into the Moorish age of long ago.”

Like Khalid, I had often travelled into the world of the Moors, but this year, I was walking in Luxor, enthralled by the monuments of Egypt’s pharaohs. In the same fashion as had the Arab remains in Spain, the fantastic temple or Karnak ensnared me in its web. Along with my travelling companions, Philip, working for a British company in Egypt, his wife Yveone, and their teen-aged daughter Gal, 1 was overwhelmed by the splendour of Egypt’s god-kings.

The next morning as I strolled along the Nile with Radha, an Indian professor who had spent most of his life employed in tile education system of Scotland and his wife Smriti, also a teacher, I spoke out loud as we walked near the garbage-strewn bank of the Nile, “I can’t stand it! Such a beautiful spot, marred by all this refuse.” Radha smiled, “You have not seen anything yet! Have you ever been in India? You North Americans always want everything perfect.”

My love of travelling in historic lands almost ended in the littered streets of Egypt, but this all changed when I travelled to Syria. Here, in this historic land, the ancient sites were being renovated and, around them, the streets had been cleaned. Jim, an English vacationer in our group, summed it all up when he said: “I travel, not only to admire the historic sites, but to savour these monuments, like here in Damascus – sans a seedy atmosphere.”

On the other hand, Earnest and Ingrid, a German couple vacationing in Recife, Brazil’s top northern resort, were not looking for history when I met them on that city’s beach. When I told them about my travels in the ancient lands of the Middle East and North Africa, both seemed uninterested. Ingrid yawned as she rolled over, “We, like the majority of world tourists, only want good food, sun, sea and sand. Who cares about heaps of rocks built by some primitive people in the past?”

Yet, even though Ingrid was right in her assessment of holidayers in the southern lands, these seaside buffs can get much more from their sojourn, than food and sun. To make vacations memorable events, one should research, in the countless libraries in North America and Europe or the Internet, the food, folklore and history of the people in the intended vacation spot.

Once there, travellers should take some of the fulfilling excursions, try the people’s food, attend folkloric evenings and, above all, talk to the ordinary people. In many cases, this will reduce the built-up prejudice of many tourists and make them much more tolerant of others. Back home, in the struggle of daily life, beaches and food pass quickly into oblivion, but inter-action with people is rarely forgotten. A genuine traveller and a frivolous tourist do not have much in common.

This difference between those who travel to gain knowledge about the world and its people and those who travel for personal pleasure was dramatically exemplified during one of my trips to Cartagena, Colombia’s top touristic enclave. I was going through my research notes on the airplane during my first journey to that troubled South American country. Beside me were two attractive Canadian women, in their late 30s or early 40s.

When the drinks were served, I began to converse with the friendly ladies who, I discovered, were staying at my hotel. During our conversation, it came out that they were both married to policemen and their husbands were home looking after the children. When the plane landed, I said, as I was bidding them adieu, “I’ll see you around the hotel.” One of them grinned, “No you won’t. We plan to find two Latino lovers. Our holiday will be indoors.” After this encounter, I only saw them on the return journey. Both seemed content and happy.” They must have found lovers”, I thought to myself.

Standing in line for customs clearance at the Cartagena Airport, I began thinking, “Were these women pulling my leg?”, when a couple, standing beside me, began a friendly conversation. During the few minutes in which I talked to them, I found that they had travelled to live, for a time, with the Indians of Colombia. I thought to myself, “There’s a wide difference as to why people travel!”

The next winter, after I had ended my tour of the beautiful, clean and exotic Malaysia, I flew to Thailand. From smog-filled, chaotic Bangkok, we travelled to Pattaya Beach, that country’s most famous resort centre. Atop its sands, alive with the hustle and bustle of touristic action, I met a group of American young men, sunning themselves on the water’s edge.

When I commented about the fine beach and soothing breezes, one of the teenagers smiled, “We didn’t come here for weather or sand. It’s the Thai beauties that drew us.” One of his friends continued, “You should see all the beautiful women we have met in just two days. We’ll be returning many more times. This country is the best place in the world for young ladies.” Another one of the group piped up, “In the future, Thailand will be the holiday spot. The country has the most seductive women in the world.”

In Thunder Bay, Ontario’s northern capital, I thought of these men, searching the world for women, as I talked to Shaun Parent, an ice and mountain climber. His was a much different El Dorado. From the Andes of Peru to the Himalayas in Nepal, he had travelled the globe searching for peaks to conquer. That day, as he rushed before me in exhilaration up a frozen waterfall, I could see that climbing was his love, more intense than that a man could have for a woman.

Shaun’s passion for mountains was matched by Ian Little’s love for skiing. I had met Ian in the Hotel Chateau Lake Louise, located by an emerald lake in a horseshoe setting of green forests and towering peaks of dazzling whiteness – one of the most stunning sites in North America. On the prowl throughout the northern lands for snow-covered slopes, he had found, in Canada’s Rocky Mountain’s Lake Louise, his Mecca. Amid the breathtaking beauty of this largest ski expanse in the country, Ian had discovered the ideal skiing paradise.

On his way to take the ski lift, he remarked, “I think my search is oven I’ll come here every winter. I’ve found my skiing Valhalla.”

On the other hand, the Eden for an English couple I had met in Niagara- on-the-Lake, Ontario’s George Bernard Shaw town, was the theatre. Well off, every year they travelled the theatre circuit in Europe and North America. Their top obsessions were Shaw and Shakespeare. They seemed to thrive among actors and stages in a world of make-believe.

As for myself, faraway places, like the sirens in Greek mythology, have always beckoned my very soul. I remember as a child, at times, dreaming of travelling the north by dog sled; at other times, in my fantasy, I would be crossing the Sahara. These yearnings for strange and faraway places have never left me. I have always wanted to find out what lies over the horizon in remote spots which I have never visited.

As a young man, one of the greatest influences which drove me to search for adventure was the book Sons of Sinbad, written by Alan Villiers. In it Villiers describes a journey he made on a traditional Arab dhow from the Arabian Gulf to the East African coast. Thereafter, I always wanted to trace his voyage.

In the spring of 1997, my longings were somewhat fulfilled. I found myself sailing on a small dhow in the Gulf of Oman. As we navigated the coast, in the distance, the glowing lights of

Muscat brought to my mind Alan Villiers’ voyage.

Now, as I sailed the calm waters of that historic Gulf, I felt relaxed and content. My thoughts went back to Sinbad the Sailor who must have navigated these waters since it is said that he was born in Sohar on the Oman coast. The adventures of that legendary Arabian Nights’ figure, in my fantasy, came alive. The creatures he met from sea monsters to gigantic birds were now almost visible.

Back home, as I sat down to write about ‘why people travel’, my daughter passed by. I asked her, “Why do you think I go on so many journeys?” Without hesitation, she retorted, “Of course, to get away from your family.”

Notwithstanding my daughter’s remark, I travel, like many others, for a number of reasons. However, everyone has his or her principal rationale for roaming the globe. Mine, in the main, is the never-ending search for what is new in the world out yonder.