Oh, so slow...

‘Oh you’re going travelling are you?’, a friend enquired, ‘Haven’t you grown out of that?’

‘Travelling’, I’m a little uncomfortable with the word – as if it’s shorthand for going on a long holiday, perhaps with the odd stint of earnest volunteering thrown in for good measure, the preserve of the fresh-faced teen or the work-shy college dropout.

Dr Livingstone I presume? Dr Alban morelike.

Who would want to spend their precious two-week holiday doing this, when they could hop in a plane and get there to the beaches and vineyards in a couple of hours?

A friend suggested that you go on holiday to get away from things, whilst you go travelling to get to things.

They had a point, but there is a third consideration here: how you get there. Travel gives you a chance to indulge in our natural urge to wander. A to B, via C,D and E.

We rarely get the chance to do this in our daily lives but, when circumstances force this upon me I’m often delighted by this unexpected opportunity. You learn the layout of the place, how it pieces together. You find a new pub or a tucked-away park, colouring in the big white spaces in your mental map of a place.

Extended to the world, perhaps then by travelling slowly, approaching the castle on a donkey rather than a rocket, you get the chance to adjust and appreciate the finer differences between places.

Whilst bringing the world closer to us air travel has obliterated this, creating a disjunction between travelling somewhere physically and arriving there mentally. You can get move between two very different places, such as London and Beijing, in a matter of hours, yet it takes day to get there in your mind. It’s as if someone has cut the power at the cinema and, when the wheel starts to whir again, Bambi has been replaced by Reservoir Dogs (or vice versa).

Travelling slowly allows our senses to appreciate these differences as a one region elides into another. We hope to recognise the gradual differences in the local accent or cooking and appreciate spotting the first snows or smelling the first spices.

So perhaps our plan, heading east slowly and incrementally, is the antidote to culture shock?