The traditional aim of travelling was to completely detach oneself from ordinary life and experience it from a wholly new perspective. For example, pilgrimages took away the individual from a man’s daily routine and allowed him to view things from another person’s outlook.
Other trips such as mountain climbing or hiking also helped erase the distractions of everyday existence and develop the personal skills of endurance and self-reliance.
Modern travelling, however, lacks any sort of the aforementioned characteristics. Instead, it has become lazy and comfortable, without any trials or tribulations. Popular travel destinations are simply like the west with a few changes here and there. With the advent of technology, tourism, and globalization, the sense of visiting a completely different place barely exists today.
South America is filled with gringos, Asia with concrete jungles and Europe is slowly becoming a cheap American ersatz. The modern traveller no longer acquires a fresh perspective, but rather the same one in a slightly altered setting.
Travelling is best undertaken with the intention of leaving behind the banalities, clichés, and distractions of home and forming a unique and entirely new opinion of the world, perhaps even enhancing skills such as physical strength.
It therefore requires great courage: completely leaving behind a comfortable life for one of uncertainty and adventure is no easy task. The lethargic habits of the modern traveller must be forgone to achieve this.
Living In Someone Else’s Dream
One of the major contributing factors to the decay of modern travelling is mass-tourism. It is a money-churning enterprise which sucks out the authenticity of the experience by urging customers to stick to a pre-determined plan of cafés, tacky gift shops, and mundane landscapes.
It does, however, lighten the burden of responsibility from the punter and allows him to ensure that his trip is embellished with comfort, micro-managed bouts of “excitement” and the company of other eager westerners; just like home, but with different weather.
The worst aspect of tourism is its removal of the individual experience. People are encouraged to frequent certain locations through advertising and peer pressure.
It is impossible to gain a unique understanding of the world from simply taking someone else’s word for it. One is simply walking down a path that another has pre-determined and blindly following them. Modern “voyages” are just like copying what others have done thousands of times before and paying for it.
Travelling For The Wrong Reasons
Too often, travelling is undertaken for the sole purpose of approval or escape. It is simply not good enough to go abroad in order to compensate for failures at home or trying to foster some validation from peers. Foreign lands are not a crutch to support a weakened, desperate man, but a means of which man can propel himself to greater personal development.
Retreating into the comforts of nature like a hippy or bathing indolently in sunny weather simply weakens the mind after a while. Having said that, relaxing in such a way is certainly permissible after long arduous stints of work or mental stress, but it should be never considered as serious “travelling” in the traditional sense of the word. This leads us onto another wrong reason for travelling: social validation.
It is clear to see that many travel for the sole purpose of impressing their friends and getting “likes” on Facebook. These people can be easily spotted by the copious amounts of photos they take of themselves in order to show everyone else.
A truly special trip’s memories would only be shared among the closest of kin, not shamelessly shown off on social media. The validation of others is the very worst reason to travel. Never undertake a journey at another’s behest unless it is a sound, reasoned recommendation.
The Real Reason To Travel
Julius Evola believed that travelling should be undertaken with spiritual virility, instead of just seeking superficial pleasure. He believed that it was wrong to simply wander from place to place, following the dreams of others without any introspection or personal development.
He abhorred the clichéd resorts favored by the masses and instead proposed voyaging to desolate, yet ethereal and peaceful locations, such as Nordic fjords or vast steppes. He believed that profound self-mastery and insight can be achieved by long, lonely journeys across harsh yet beautiful terrains, as opposed to calmer environments frequented by the bourgeois class.
It is perhaps not necessary to dash up Everest or fare to Northern Siberia to gain knowledge of the self, but Evola’s underlying point is clear. Modern travelling has lost the sense of venturing into the unknown, the mystical and the unfamiliar.
The breath-taking wonders of traditional travelling have been replaced by vulgar photo opportunities and the defiant wayfarer with the shallow selfie-taker. In fact, the modern man will go to great lengths, at great monetary cost, to avoid surprises and the mysterious whilst maintaining the luxuries of home. It is sad to see such a great pastime lose its value.
Bring Back The Original Purpose Of Travel
There have been many accounts of famous, courageous journeys by great people. Countless brave men have even danced with death in order to enhance their knowledge of the world and themselves. Modern men have a regrettable tendency to get lost in themselves, their own technological creations, romantic ruminations, and physical sensations. They neglect the vastness of the world and instead obsess over petty, little pseudo-issues and whimsical desires.
J. M. W. Turner’s view of Buttermere Lake: a true view of the chaos and mysticism of beauty
Travelling into the unknown requires leaving the old life behind. The world we live in goes far beyond our minute creations and man-made romantic landscapes. The true traveller voyages to this world with a blank slate, realizing that there is more to life than himself and his peers.
It is time to break out of the confines of modern tourism and rediscover a thirst for exploration which has long since faded away.
Read More: Will The Philippines Become The Next Poosy Paradise Lost?
Anton AWESOME use of a Julius Evola reference! Every man should become familiar with his work, just like every woman is of Kim Kardashian! He is an icon of philosophy and esoterica!
Ah, Western Europe, where White girls go after college to take their token “year off” (not like they’ll work very hard EVER anyway) to travel because it’s super safe, White, Christian, and everybody in every urban area speaks English now because they’ve all become American nuthuggers after 1990 (you all know what I’m alluding to here!). I highly doubt they’d go to any rural areas, those Gypsies are fucking scary and I’ve heard stories, bro!
Oh and fuck that cunt who took the Auschwitz selfie. Please remove any reference to her. All she wanted was attention anyway, and here we are feeding it. She’d probably blush and giggle if she saw this article. Straight to Hell, bitch!
“Ah, Western Europe, where White girls go after college to taken their token “year off””
Western European girls usually go to Australia “backpacking”, an euphemism for sampling exotic cock.
Yep, anywhere where everybody else looks, thinks, acts and for the most part talks like you so you can feel safe imbibing drinks/dicks while posting innumerable braggy selfies.
Fuck that. Give me Eastern Europe, where corruption is simply a way of life, for a real adventure. Nothing like having to look over my shoulder every five feet while overseas!
it even hints at which hole they will use
Used to share a house in Bondi (Sydney Australia) with an English chick, she must have had a notch count of at least 10 guys in the 3 months she was there…that’s who I know of anyway.
I was just in Hawaii and fucking people were taking selfies on the USS Arizona Memorial. I wanted to push them into the water.
BTW, “selfie sticks” are a real thing and freaking every person from Asia has one and uses it. I thought they were just a gag gift.
Bro go to Vegas and large groups of Asians everywhere are using selfie sticks and clogging up sidewalks!
Although I must admit, I wish I had invented that motherfucker and become a zillionaire by now!
Who the fuck would go to Vegas? Biggest clump of false cheese there is.
I’m not far from there so I’ve been quite a bit. I’m pretty over it by now though and don’t plan on going much more in the future.
90% of Vegas nightlife is shit. Where are the clubs on the commercials? Where are the cool places? I just go because that’s the only place all my buddies will agree to meet up at. I’d rather go on a cruise at this point.
I had a friend take a picture of myself at Pearl Harbor in 2009 but did not do anything obnoxious, skanky, or silly. No way, how fucking disrespectful can you be?
They’ve been taught not to respect anything and it shows.
Right. I have a picture in front of a Polaris missile by the museum. Not on the memorial directly above 1000 dead men!
I couldn’t figure out what the nice asian people kept trying to sell me over there. They didn’t understand when I asked either, even in the Philippines. Oddly proud that I didn’t figure it out on my own until I happened to stumble over it on the net later on.
Good insight. Indeed europe is becoming more homogenized and more ‘like’ other places.
When going to serious landmarks like Auschwitz where one goes to learn of atrocities, it’s pretty fucking tacky to make a photo of yourself smiling. Then again, how long will it be before we see a McCafe at one of those places.
When I visited Auschwitz our tour guide actually went off on someone for asking if there was a restaurant on the premises
I really want to believe that it wasn’t an American, but………
Because most people, even many of those who visit such places, can’t name the years WW2 spanned if their own lives depended on it
The depressing part for me is how cheap and nasty, and inauthentic many of the resorts on the Med are.
I mean, why the fuck are Spain and Portugal so keen to sell shit English food? My wife and I struggled to find any native food in numerous places.
Holidays – well for many it’s just an open excuse for drink, drugs and cheating on spouses. Depressing. A cultural and moral white flag
“Because most people, even many of those who visit such places, can’t name the years WW2 took place”
True. The same morons that gasp and gag if you say the word “Aryan” around them or if the see a Native American or Buddhist swastika and have no idea that all those concepts existed for millenia before The Beer Hall Putsch.
Fucking idiots.
Yep.
Seriously. Ask a random college educated person:
The years the war spanned
The belligerents
The prominent leaders and generals…
…you’ll get nothing but blank faces. I knew these things when I was 8 years old. But then again my Dad valued learning and loathed ignorance.
My family is Aryan. Indo-Aryan. You want to try and rewrite our history because of some appalling bullshit some whackjobs did posing as Aryans for twelve whole years last century? Ask me how much I fucking care about that!
If no one in their lives bothered to teach them, you can hardly blame them for their ignorance. It used to be the responsibility of the parents, the church, the community at large, the schools, other social institutions, and the culture, to teach people about their collective pasts. ALL of these persons/institutions have given up fulfilling that responsibility.
The result shouldn’t be surprising, but let’s lay blame where it’s due.
The troubling thing is, these days you even get blank faces from the teachers if you bring up details and ask them for input.
Because they don’t really “teach” a goddamn thing in this country, they’re just glorified babysitters with a $20,000 babysitting certificate.
Travel is a status marker, now. “I have the wealth and free time to go somewhere else therefore I have higher status”. I saw it just this week when a female colleague returned from vacation. She lamented that the weather was not that warm and I quote “I didn’t get any sun, how are people supposed to know I went away if I don’t have a tan?”. I merely smiled knowingly bit kept big mouth shut.
I ALWAYS rudely exit conversations when some jackass (male or female) tries to travel brag, especially when they want to overshare volunteer their stores when you didn’t even ask and they just forcefuck a way to interject them into a conversation just to brag. Fuck, as an adult I’ve been to South America once and Asia three times for three different countries (and might possibly go to a different Asian country again this year), but I NEVER volunteer stories unless someone shows genuine interest by asking first! How fucking obnoxious!
I am with you in spirit. These days, I find it best to reveal as little of your true thoughts as possible in the workplace. I merely file it away as a piece of information to exploit later. Today’s corporate world is to be treated like the battlefields of the Chinese waring states period, or Guelph/ Ghibilline Florence.
Exactly. Travel is the new status whoring with social media as the amplifier. I think some people really just travel so they can take selfies at some bullshit monument to maximize their facebook likes. People are literally traveling for the purpose of facebook likes. Think about this.
Oh I have thought about it! Travel and exercise are the new domain of the social media braggart. The former you either are born into money for or can easily dicksuck your way into money for, the latter you simply either play dress-up or dress-down for in front of a mirror while striking poses incorrect and making some “Beast Mode!” face and adding idiotic hashtags like “#youcantsquatthis”. Gets on my goddamn nerves!
well i am sure that when she tests positive for hep c, she can use the test results as proof
I worked in a hospital for a few years where I had to be around a lot of specialist doctors just getting started in their careers. Early 30s males mostly, plus assorted sycophantic support staff. The passive aggressive one upping over who’s traveled where and what they’ve done, dear God, you wanted to gag. I’ve done a lot of solitary cycling in North America myself but I guess it just doesn’t beat ballooning in Africa over elephants.
Traveling can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean to them. For me it’s about seeing the world as it is now. Sure that may mean passing through the vulgarity of tourist traps and lamenting at the “lost innocence” of the locals who’ve cashed in on this, but that is simply the progress of a world that is growing smaller, yet more accessible for the people who couldn’t previously afford to experience the rich delights the world has to offer.
TBH you sound like one of the twats in the Inbetweeners 2 movie who try to out do each other over which is the “truer traveler”. Fuck them and fuck what you think about anyone else who chooses to hit The Road and experience it for themselves in their own way.
By that calculation, they might as well visit Epcot and see 8 countries in a single afternoon! If you’re visiting a potemkin village or visit ensconced behind the windows of an A/C cooled van with other like tourists………….you’re not really there. Stay at home, television is cheaper anyway.
I thought women were banned. Now in good faith, it seems that you didn´t grasp the meaning of the article…
Great article and great message. Few Americans truly travel anymore, and if they do, its to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico or the DR which doesnt count anyway.
That shit might be cool for couples or even singles if they’re marketed that way, but otherwise else, no thanks!
Better that they’re there, and not crowding some place where you’d want be.
Do like my nephews (raised by a NAWALT mother and an alpha dad) do: they sail around the world on their own boats, island hopping, getting work where they feel like it.
Rough estimate of whereabouts?
That sounds fucking awesome.
Mostly pacific islands.
Planning on doing exactly that. Sail east and north in the summer, south in the winter.
Like just about everything these days, the time to do that was 20 years ago. Too many casual clods are doing it now and have ruined it for the people who appreciate it.
Read Trekka Round the World for a glimpse of what it used to be like.
Read everything by Lin and Larry Pardey if you think you really want to do it.
Where abouts.
I´ve tried this during my 20s (not on a sailboat but on the road).
After about 3 years it got really annoying because you´re always dependent on other people somehow (money, jobs, places to crash etc) and you´re always broke…so I moved back into my mother’s basement and started my life all over again.
The upside…when I was 30 I´ve seen half of this beautiful planet and met a lot of interesting people along the way.
Like Cain in “Kung Fu” 😉
Do it this way. Now that you have a job, travel on the weekends. Go out Saturday morning, be back Sunday night.
You still have money and you still visit interesting locations and meet interesting people.
That sounds like the dream. Get out into the world and not give a dam about what others think
That sounds amazing
The only interesting left that not everyone has been to are war zones. And that probably won’t last long – selfies at Islamic State beheadings and burning people alive.
It will get to that
Mark my words
Not before being kidnapped and held to ranson in an orange jumpsuit.
How’s that Auschwitz photo lol.
Fat American girls shouldn’t be allowed to travel
Most people shouldn’t be allowed to travel.
Or breathe.
Fat girls shouldn’t be allowed
Fat, nasty American girls should be kept in America.
Based strictly on the vast number of fat, nasty American girls in America, I thought they were.
I thought they already are. They got a lot of 7-11s, McDonald’s, Burger King, etc. for these fatties. America is pretty much ‘Fatty Paradise’ and the world thinks they’re a fat country. Plus, a fat girl would rather sit home with her fatty snacks, Netflix and Iphone. She’s just perfectly happy to be in America.
If it came to that there would be almost no American women traveling (not that that would be a bad thing.)
I remember coming back to the States after Europe and seeing “all that America had to offer”. I died inside knowing that I just left a continent of thin, attractive, healthy women for, well you know.
America = BBW (or BUG ‘Big Ugly Girl’) Paradise
They don’t even travel that much. They’d rather eat a shit ton of food, sit on the couch, go to POF and watch Hulu or Netflix.
An ‘Around the World in 80 days’ journey in this day and age sounds really interesting. You could inspire yourselves by reading some Jules Verne and other famous adventure genre novelists to get you going.
But travel is getting easier and that’s a good thing. You don’t have to pay $250/night hotel rates. You can rent a cottage for entire month for $1000 in some places. Take advantage of exchange rates.
Find a small city or town away from the tourist routes, but on the local business routes.
Rent a small house or apartment of the local sort at local rates. Stay until people in the neighborhood start saying Good Morning to you. That’ll take at least three months, if you’re personable and honestly try to fit in as a local.
Then you can say you’ve “been” there.
pretty much sums it for me
Interesting technique: Move in a zigzag pattern when being chased by an animal with larger mass. Larger mass, larger inertia. Larger inertia, higher difficulty in changing the direction of their path.
Fantastic fucking film reference
love this movie, love this clip and very well done with using it in appropriate manor. 10 out of 10 for this comment raves lolknee
Travel used to be the province of members of the upper classes, who had the education to benefit from visiting new places. The average person now travels to new places for the sole purpose of checking it off a list of “things you have to see.” They don’t really know why they were there, or the value of what they were seeing, only that they were there.
This practice, like other selfish tendencies, seems to be most prominent among women. I find that most guys don’t have the traveling bug, and are content to stay at home or visit an exotic beach location. Women by contrast seem to treat the world as a theme park, writ large. Travel embodies a certain controlled danger, that women crave. It’s thrill seeking, pure and simple. I cringe any time I hear a girl brag about the ten or so countries she visited, none of which she could tell me anything about.
Very few people travel for purposes of education and personal growth, and it’s the others who keep clogging up the sites, cities, and drive up prices. Just think of how cheap and pleasant traveling would be, if the idiots stayed at home?
This Is true I often see women travel to 12+ countries in 2 weeks or something similar, how can you really experience the culture or character of the place an meet the locals properly if your spending a day in a country? If I travel I like to spend time in a place to obsorb the culture an meet locals.
I’ve always had an interest in both the medieval period and the Catholic Church generally, throughout my life, but I only recently had a chance to visit England and Italy. Being there, being in the places I had read about or studied, was like filling out the pieces of a puzzle, like going to an orchestra playing when I’d previously only read the sheet music. It’s one thing to study it; it’s another to be there and feel the history singing to you from all around you.
It also highlighted that a great deal of ancient architecture was made as much to inspire awe in the visitor as an act of devotion. Bernini’s work on St. Peter’s Basilica is a prime example of it; you walk into the great arc of the open plaza — designed to show the Church as embracing the world — and then into St. Peter’s Basilica itself, and the sheer dimensions and perfection of the architecture are enough to take your breath away. If you’d been a Christian on pilgrimage you would certainly feel as I did — as if you were standing at a beating heart of Catholicism if not Christianity in the world.
It also gave tremendous context and perspective. The architecture in my antipodean land of origin was revealed as distinctly colonial and aping that of its English progenitors; but the architecture in England revealed it as colonial aping of Roman origins and classicism. But I would not have appreciated it anywhere near as much had I not known a decent bit of history first.
Try Stonehenge next time. And also the village of Battle near Hastings. This will provide a different feel for you.
Don’t be cruel.
Don’t bother with Stonehenge. I went there when I was younger and the entire place is fenced off unless you want to pay, and even then you can barely get within 50 meters of it.
Unless things have changed since I went.
Yeah don’t bother with one of the wonders of the world. Rubbish. Go to the Millennium Bridge instead.
In its fenced off and heavily commercialised state it doesn’t look so wondrous.
Its not the way it looks per se that is “wonderous”, it is the fact that it exists and no one can figure out how ancient Man built it. It is a thinking man’s exhibit. It needs to be fenced off to preserve it.
The Duomo of Milano if you haven’t seen it yet. Leaves you speechless.
Amen bro. I know that feeling. One of the best in the world. I first got it when I attended a vatican traveling exhibition called st.peter and the vatican: the legacy of the popes by Monsignor Roberto Zagnolli.
The issue is, is that the average person is, well, average. Therefore, they do not travel to see something different, to sample foreign food, to meet interesting people and learn a little something of themselves.
They travel for the Sun, the beach, parties and to eat the same (junk) food in the foreign country as they do at home. They treat foreign countries like cruise ships or museums where the cafe caters for simple uniform tastes.
The phrase I hate hearing most (and it is usually and American that says it) is, Why can’t they do/be/feel like back home? If you want things to be just like home, then please oh please stay home.
… and the average tourist is an asian with a camera. Last time I was at the Notre Dam it was infested with them. Flashes = 100, Ambiance = 0. Also, there are a lot of niggers in Paris.
I think Paris is now majority black. They had a “nigga invasion, point blank, on a Caucasian…”
-Ice Cube.
Yeah, I was just quoting that Jayz song, but it’s so true. Was in Cateau de Gaulle station about 5 years ago and the ratio of black to white was roughly 1000:1. And I fucking hate it. France should be French. England should be English. And wouldn’t you know it, China’s still Chinese and Africa’s still African. But whatever, whites will always be called racist by the minorities as a tool for subversive total domination. Thing is blacks have been using that tool for too long and most whites are done with it. The more we hear “racist” the sooner the next Hitler is going to come along.
Funny that you say that since both France and Britain were colonial powers in Africa and the Caribbean. But keep touting that ignorance.
Really? You honestly didn’t think I know that? And does that make any fucking difference to my statement? Nope. Is the north of Africa overrun by French and English? Nope. What about the Caribbean? Nope. Try to use your brain the next time you reply to me.
If all the idiots stayed home there would be no tourism infrastructure. All the hotels would go broke. All the guides would go back to productive work. All the airlines would cut back to about 10 flights a day; all to business hub cities.
Never underestimate the number and power of the idiots.
Hey “Princess Breanna” want some attention? Go take the same selfie in Raqqa. Trust me, you’ll get lots of Likes and Comments from your Beta Brigade right quick! 😉
The original purpose of travel was self purification and spiritual realization through holy pilgrimage. Millions of people still take these journeys in South Asia. I recommend the Char Dham Yatra (4 Holy Places Pilgrimage) in India. It won’t be easy. But it will be worth it.
The reason travel doesn’t offer any perspectives anymore is because there aren’t any new perspectives. Everything has been melted together in a global pot of uniform culture and worldview. Nowadays you have to actually try hard to go someplace where perspectives are genuinely different. Afghanistan or North Korea, or a far-flung village in the Nepalese highlands. And most people don’t go to these places because they’re too afraid of getting killed.
Every damned hotel looks the same, and they all serve cornflakes, toast and orange juice for breakfast.
But at least you can still go out and mingle with the exotic locals wearing their native clothing of blue jeans and T-shirt.
You aren’t doing it right. Get away from the SWPL hotels and hangouts in any country outside North America and there’s still plenty of adventures to be had. I agree with you on some level about globalization but it’s still possible to get away from that stuff.
But forty years ago, it was much more common to hike through Pakistan and Afghanistan than to visit much of SE Asia.
Maybe in forty years, both regions will be equally welcoming or equally hostile.
I’d be glad if someone took the time to just explore his/her hometown.
I’ll travel wherever, whenever and for whatever reason I want. Go fuck yourself.
Thank you. Sure if the author wants to get into a feces fight with the tribes, hells yeah.
you bring the same head with you wherever you go,
enlightenment, is seeing with new eyes, not viewing different scenery with the same eyes
More people travel now than ever before. I used to go camping with my family back in a lot of the national parks 30 years ago. There were no lines to get in, there were only a handful of people staying in them. If you wanted a cave tour you could show up 20 minutes before hand and get in. These days you need to make reservations.
I travel a bit, have lived overseas a lot. Through the years I’ve seen my share of places. I’ve never owned a camera. I’m not saying that’s cool or something but it’s gotten me to really have the mindset that when I’m going somewhere that it’s actually still my life unfolding. I’m living that day, not documenting it. It helps that I hate cameras but it’s something to consider if your last vacation was somehow empty to you.
Julius Evola is a total boss. Every man should learn how to ride the tiger.
The JMW Turner painting you’ve used here is very beautiful.
The lowest form of “travel” may be the beach resort vacation. There’s not an iota of difference between 99% of those places. A guest could be in Mexico, or the Caribbean, or off in the Pacific somewhere — and have an identical experience.
I knew a guy who took a vacation like that together with his girlfriend. They went to Mexico (not that it matters), where they lay around the pool during the day and several times went out on an excursion boat by night with hundreds of other tourists to get roaring drunk. When they came back, they delightedly told me about how huge and colorful the drinks were. Um, ok…
One way to experience the strange and wondrous is to voyage back to the past, when the world was still a mysterious place and the locals weren’t all wearing baseball caps and T-shirts. Reading travel books written before (say) 1960 takes us to a time when almost nothing was like what we see around us today, and when traveling could be an adventure and an art.
Ferinstance, a favorite book of mine is James Michener’s “Iberia”, an account of his many, lengthy trips to Spain, during several decades. Utterly fascinating, and a window into Spanish history and culture.
You weren’t impressed by the colors of their drinks? What’s wrong with you? (sarcasm).
I’m gonna check out that book.
A booked vacation/cruise package is like an arranged marriage. The temptation to sneak off deck and break from the group at least for me would be unbearable.
I met a couple of Russian exchange students who had local jobs as lifeguards. They had to follow a set schedule and bike right back to their host group home after work everyday. It would seem that the exchange program would be a lot more free as far as leeway to meander about a country but I could only hang out with the girls till 10 p.m. or they would get written up. WTF.
I even tried to get the super hot platinum blonde one to expat and just say fuck the program. She was an 8.5 but with an interesting roman nose like the pope. She looked perfect though straight from the front. The other one was brunette and tall like a women’s basketball player but both were a cool package. They had the fear instilled in them that they’d be breaking the law if they ran to my place even though I explained to them how millions of illegals flood the borders and economy here every year. I’d go ballistic if any Immigration stoolies ever selectively fucked with my white Russian chicks when just blocks away the crowds of day labor illegals gather freely. No telling how I’d react if the state messed with my girls. We got so far but they cut it off at the end of their stay. I took them all around, clubs and my place but only so far as to make it back by 10 every time.
I guess it takes a long time to deprogram the fear of the state out of most people. I’ve always said FUCK THE STATE and honestly I get ‘carded’ or frisked or interrogated by monkeys with badges no more and perhaps even less than your average ‘upstanding’ ‘see something say something’ speddy state boot licker.
Facebook has ruined travel for the truly addicted. I spent December in Europe and didn’t post a single photo, didn’t check in anywhere, barely even signed in. It made the trip a shit-load better, as I was enjoying the places for what they were, and not just doing it to wrack up Facebook likes and beg everyone to think I’m worldly.
I’m with you. When I travel, I post maybe one photo and that’s it. I still print my photos and put them in albums or print out nice large photos and frame them on my walls and change them out every few months.
After reading about selfie sticks here on ROK, a guy I know (friend of a friend) went to Europe and did these irritating-as-fuck 360′ aerial circle videos of him throughout Europe with his selfie stick. I was at work and saw it and was like “that fucker traveled with a selife stick?!”. I had to block his feeds. I couldn’t stand it.
I didn’t know selfie sticks existed until I got to London and Paris. Every street corner/landmark is surrounded by morons waving the sticks around
anton, thanks for this article. after wanting to punch my monitor looking at the auschwitz girl, my mood was redeemed by seeing the beautiful painting by turner. that man could capture so much beauty and detail in each of his brush strokes.
I call bullshit. Get a good guidebook, do your homework, stay in authentic places, avoid the high season, eat where the locals eat and ideally pick up some of the language so you can chat to locals. And then just ignore joe average tourist around you.
I agree with most of this but I will say that travel can be beneficial in game. Women are always intrigued with a man who has traveled and their hivemind assumes that if she hooks up with him he’ll take her on one of his adventures.
I think we believe too much that where we are from, the western world for most on this site is “Normality”. Sure, we can go to all these far off places, but many fail to see that the places we travel to are in fact the status quo for those who live there. We can go off and live in these places for a while it seems, but we are conditioned to feel if it isn’t “Real” unless it is in a first world country where we were born. It is seen as “Running away” from reality, if you catch me.
Let’s not confuse travelling with tourism. Tourists are the ones clogging up the streets of the worlds major cities, they make for good business and some countries depend on hordes of them every summer. Travelling of course can literally just be a verb of motion but it also carries with it a deeper meaning, a better word might be to call it a journey. Anything can be a journey, you can see the world from a different perspective anytime, you don’t even need to leave your country. Take a different way home from work, leave your phone at home and get lost somewhere, hitchhike … The list is endless it all depends on your imagination and ability to be inspired. To do this you need to cultivate an enquiring mind, which is not easy in today’s world where we are bombarded with media images constantly.
You have to be one sick narcissistic person to take a selfie of yourself at Auschwitz
let’s add the word ‘ignorant’ to describe that cunt as well.
I saw this jabronni in Aushwitz with Pit bull sunglasses on (It was spitting rain) and a fucking POPPED COLLAR PINK RALPH LAUREN SHIRT. unforgivable
People like her make Americans look bad.
One also has to consider how the world has changed. A little over a century ago the world was still an immense and to large degree undiscovered place (at least to the average person). However, with today’s advancements in communications, transportation etc. technology it has become much smaller and accessible to everybody. Add in globalization and everyday it will continue to become even smaller and more alike. It doesn’t mean that as a traveler you can’t find a unique experience anymore, but you really have to try and find it, while in the past all you had to do is simply travel.
One very underrated and untouched way to travel is going to our country’s amazing national and state parks. We atv and snowmobile and camp out and each and every place is amazing and free of the tourists described in this article. Outside of each state park are bars and restaurants which u can go to at night to meet the locals and taste the culture. Keep in mind these are places like gatlinburg Tennessee and 29 palms California so hardly bastions of sjw there. I traveled solo around the world for six months back in 08 and it was the best experience of my life. Total freedom. Although I do regret not take even one picture in six months!
Agree. I like going where the locals go and avoiding all the stupid tourist crowds. State Parks are reasonably priced and a nice way to get away from technology and all of the distractions of life.
Yep, modern traveling has become an insult to the places visited like if it were a rape. Raping repeatedly the beauty and dignity of that place. Selfies to show off, implying that the author of the selfie understands the place or monument he/she is visiting. It’s all self marketing, narcissism etc.
The worst are those millennial college brats who study abroad in Western Europe and then brag about those few months like it makes them cultured, well traveled, and a “wanderlust.”
S.America is full of gringos depending on what you do. Peru’s Cusco is filled w/ gring but it’s also the only stop to MP. It can’t be helped. Also Mira Flores, very touristy and gringos everywhere, but if you walk 3 blocks to the west and 1 block north across the bridge, not a gringo to be seen and you get the normal rates. Ecudor Guayaquil, if you only stay in the Malecon 200 sure, but the inner city or Urdessa no gringos. I saw maybe 4~5 the time there. I think it totally depends on how you travel, if you want the safe and secure way, spot on. If you go outside the lines you’ll get the authentic experience.
Yeh travelling to out of the way places is one level of the foreign travel experience, and certainly builds your character. But this pales into comparison with trying to live in a say a foreign country and culture, where you are forced to learn a new language, and experience the challenge of struggling for months or years to do things that you took for granted back home. I’ve done the ‘living’ voyage, pulled it off successfully at first, then hit a brick wall that eventually left me without a job and an ability to continue in that foreign land. Just gave up in the end, and so am back home again after a decade with nothing to show for it economically. But man I can say I feel like I have come out of a decade long war, and am profoundly altered from the experience. I certainly have my scars, but I come away with good health at least. I am stronger and wise for the experience, and for this I am extremely grateful. It will certainly serve me well now and in the future with all the curved balls that life throws our way. Already been said here in these forums, but I would certainly recommend to anyone to attempt living in a foreign country for a few years if you want a real character-building life challenge.
The main problem is that the world is so rapidly homogenizing. It’s stunning. I spent time in Japan in the mid 90s and was back recently. The change is amazing. They are totally sucked into the anglosphere-mediaborg-vortex. It was a far more alien and interesting place 20 years ago.
If you’re inside a couple hundred miles of an international airport or near a tourist site, it’s increasingly all the same shit anymore. The only way it’s going to be valuable is if you tank up a motorcycle and get well away from the global urban matrix.
I was also in some shitty little rural Jordanian towns in the desert recently and that was in fact a valuable head trip. It might as well be three hundred years ago and it wouldn’t matter to those people; eye opening. I’d say for travel to mean anything anymore it has to involve walking or biking impressive distances away from modern hospitals. If you can just fly and take a train there without speaking the language it’s probably a waste of time.
An ex girlfriend of mine, whenever Italy was mentioned in conversation, would without fail, launch into her story about some aspect of Italian life with the sentence ‘When I lived in Italy for 2 months…’. I gagged each time at the pretentiousness of the statement. In my opinion, you don’t ‘live’ somewhere for 2 months…..you ‘stay’ or ‘visit’ somewhere for 2 months…but not ‘live’! I’ve ‘lived in China for 11 years now, but when I go home, I NEVER offer up stories of my time here unless asked by a genuinely interested party.
Nothing I’ve seen in my life disappointed me more than Stonehenge. When I went there in 2013, I expected it to be a bit of a tourist trap, but I did expect to find some of the original charm that my parents (who had visited it in the 1960s and 1970s, and said that only the hippies were a problem) described. At that time, they were still able to just walk up to the monument without paying and they could walk in between the stones to get a proper look at the site. It also helped that they did not visit it during the summer, which apparently is a very bad idea.
On arrival, I found an entire field (the new visitors’ centre had not been finished yet, so there were no proper parking spaces) full of cars, caravans and even buses full of tourists from all corners of the world. I had to stand in line for the better part of an hour, behind chattering groups of elderly Americans on package tours and Asian tourists who insisted on taking pictures of everything, including people waiting in line with them. When I had finally paid an extortionate amount of money to get in, I found that you weren’t actually allowed anywhere near Stonehenge itself (too many tourists, not enough security staff), and had to push your way through throngs of tourists for a peek at the central stones. As it was a cloudy day, everyone had the flashes on their cameras on, and it looked as though the place was the scene of an important press conference at times.
Whatever it was the builders of Stonehenge back in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age had intended with this monument, it wasn’t this. Actually, I had a much better experience than the one I had at Stonehenge somewhere in the countryside, where I found a very simple Neolithic dolmen that you could only reach by walking through a small muddy field. It was only marked by a small sign saying that it had been built a few millennia ago, and was probably a grave marker of some sort. It didn’t have the ‘grandeur’ of Stonehenge, but I could actually walk up to it and see it from up close, and see how it fit into the landscape, and the only other people there were a few shepherds in the nearby fields (it was part of a beautiful landscape with low, rolling hills without forests) and two elderly people.
Certainly, it’s a shame that mass tourism has forever ruined sites like Stonehenge. In fact, the new visitors’ centre (which is now complete, I’ve heard) is a massive eyesore in a landscape that was actually intended by Stonehenge’s builders to be linked with their monuments. That visitors’ centre is the symbol for what’s wrong with tourism: making money off people with only a passing interest in what a monument, site or natural wonder really is has become more important than allowing people who are passionate about it to study it in detail and keeping it intact.
You might say grand theft auto, but I did buy the owner of this bajaj (tuk-tuk) some baby powder:
buildingmybento.com/2013/11/09/jakarta-bajaj/
hey RoK are you trying to starve us italians? haha
welcome to to global village, new world order where everything is the the same, Everything is already owned by the wealthy and or mega rich super conglomerates. Everything is already parted and parceled out so one does not have to worry their little brains out if they are experiencing something new and goodness forbid a bit dangerous.Nope none of that, you can be safe because the global village big daddy will make sure that everyone will be speaking the same language as you, wearing the same clothes, eating the same foods and thinking and perceiving the world in the same bland soulless way. So be sure to take lot’s of pics so you can amaze your “friends” on fakebook while sipping that vente starsucks frappolatecafemothafucka you cultured world traveler you! Damn, is your name Marco Polo?
Goddman, can you believe these cunts? Seriously, is there anything some women won’t do for attention???:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/10/travel/cambodia-angkor-nude-tourists/index.html
Yep, leave it to two ugly American bitches in their early-20s to do appalling acts on someone else’s sacred grounds:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/caught-their-pants-down
I basically disagree with this post.
I mean sure it’s annoying when people go to an exotic place and demand the familiarities of home. But I find it more frustrating when I run into people who purposefully “impoverish themselves” purely as means of having a “personal experience.” Like “I slept on the floor of a hut! I’m a real traveler.” I want to punch those people in the face.
My family comes from third world poverty and immigrated to the US for a better life. I find it insulting when people from the first world go to countries like Nepal or the Philippines etc…and stay in uncomfortable quarters, as a way of “experiencing” life outside of their own. Don’t treat poverty or other cultures as some kind of vacation (whether it’s for 2 weeks or 2 years). Some people sleep on floors, live in tents, do without air conditioning, eat strange meals (like fish covered in maggots and flies) because that is their life. They have no other choice! They are not looking for some kind of personal “enlightenment” or “experience.” Or worse yet, those travelers call it their “education.” It’s an “educational experience.” Cue the rolling of my eyes. Those people to me are the most selfish, boorish and idiotic!
I actually prefer the people who stay in hotels and acknowledge that that is their life, instead of those who treat other cultures as a vacation from their own. I’m tired of these so-called travelers that need to endure self-imposed “hardships” in order to elevate themselves above the regular “tourists,” because they “challenged” themselves. They are exactly what they hate “tourists,” but worse because have a bloated head. All they are doing is just feeding their ego. If they were serious about “learning” about other cultures or “helping” the poor they wouldn’t treat it as their own personal enlightement.
I wish the imperative for young people today, wasn’t go out and travel the world! I wish it was go down the street and help your fellow man. I live in America, in a big city. I go about 20 minutes from where I live and already I encounter poverty. I encounter cultures different from mine. You don’t need to go somewhere exotic to experience life and learn. Travel is simply a luxury and I appreciate the people who acknowledge that.
Travel in your own car. Last summer I visited several colleges on the east coast, and the experience of navigating highways, traveling 700+ miles in one day, visiting cities thousands of miles away from anything i knew, and guarding my mother in a semi-gentrified Philadelphia neighborhood certainly expanded my perspective.