Why it is so that travelling is considered as a luxury and not as a part of lifestyle that should be adopted. Just as we make space for exercise for our physical and mental health so does travelling does to your overall well being. It allows our brain to breathe. Travelling in this sense is not merely about changing location. It’s about changing that same familiar surroundings, same monotonous routine that we are trapped in.
The effect-recovery theory (Meijman and Mulder 1998) and the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll 1998) suggest that taking a leisure trip provides opportunities for relaxation, detachment from work, mastery experience, and personal control.” (1)
There is a strange kind of stillness in how the average Indians moves through life now. Constant motion yet no real movement at all. The average Indians wakes up, works, eats, sleeps, repeats. Not because life demands it, but because we have stopped questioning whether it could look any different. Our minds become accustomed to the same peoples, same surroundings, same road infact the same walls and our minds starts functioning automatically. The walls of our Pg or rooms or office becomes our boundaries within which our experiences and thoughts exists.
I think there is where travelling plays a big role.
Waking up at a new place gives a new energy to our mind. Your mind which has subconsciously started thinking that your life confines only within those walls, suddenly becomes alert & starts noticing the beauty of life. Mind is where our entire universe resides & new experiences , new wonders are a treat for our mind.
If we compare average Indians lifestyle to a young European backpacking through a new country or a new area every few months- and not as an escape but just a normal part of life. Travelling should not actually mean travelling to another country or state it should include small places that we actually go through daily but our routine does not allows us to stop and visualise them. To normalise travelling we should first normalise taking breaks as a part of our lifestyle. I feel every coin has two side so if we work hard for 20 days why can’t we normalise taking a break for our mental peace, as a period of exploration and a moment of rest. Travelling become one such form of exploration.
One of the misconceptions related to travelling is that travelling requires expensive hotels, expensive flights. But reality is some of the memorable journeys of life lies in the simplest edges of life – a general class train journey with friends or a picnic to a normal park.
This essay asks a very simple yet uncomfortable question: what has made comfort so sacred and travel such a sacred ritual.
A person who has always been living in a village, if steps out and travel to some city will surely end up getting new experiences, new dimension of life and moreover sometimes travelling to new places gives us a realisation that the place where we were living or the monotonous routine that we were tired of was actually not that boring or the problem that was seeming huge within four walls of our daily life was actually just a small part of the whole life.
Sometimes even if we chose travelling as an escape, why not.? Why can’t we normalize the other aspects of life—escaping, feeling sad, and feeling tired? Why can’t we simply see them as emotions rather than treating them as something wrong?
Many people suffer from organisational stress. The stress of being the best in their workplace, the competition within the colleagues and researches shows that all this happens because their life has become confined to that place. Their daily monotonous travel to same place makes their mind believe that this is life only. They start weighing their happiness on the basis of what that place brings to them whether they are appreciated there and if someday there work is not recognised they feel that all their efforts was [waste](http://waste.in). In such conditions a trip or a small tour to your favourite place cannot just make you feel better but surely will give you new ideas to do the same thing and make you realise where all you were lacking. Life isn’t limited to that one corner, we confines it there by our choices.
Travel to new places, meet new people’s, see the new aspects of life because at last travelling is not about changing location, it’s about seeing the world with a changed perspective.
As Saint Augustine says : “The World is a book and those who do not travel read only one page”.
When an old man is asked what life means to you he replied : that he never had time to understand what it meant to him because he was always so occupied with his responsibilities that he rarely asked himself that whether he was actually satisfied but he says whenever he used to travel to his native place that travel used to create a pause in which he can reflect on his priorities and choices. The core idea is not about moving/ travelling. It’s about breaking that loop of your life. The same middle age life pattern.
Interestingly we have already recognised the importance of travelling in some ordinary moments of life. Couples are often said “kahin ghum aao” – go somewhere together . It is so as if somewhere people from earlier times only somewhere intuitively understand that a relationship cannot be built only through conversation in the same familiar surroundings. A new dimensions of a person is known through new journeys, new experiences and new adventures. A study of romantic couples found that shared experiences during vacations were associated with greater relationship satisfaction, with factors such as couple cohesion and flexibility helping explain the relationship. (2)
A person behaves a certain way when bound within certain walls. The environment and surrounding within which a person repeatedly lives influence the way he thinks, behaves and perceives the thoughts.There is a well-established concept in psychology called environmental psychology, which examines how physical and social environments influence human behaviour and well-being. (3)
The younger generation has grown in the world where different cultures, places and lifestyle are visible on the social media and other platforms which awakens the desire to explore the world in them. According to India’s Ministry of Tourism, domestic tourist visits increased from 1,731.01 million in 2022 to about 2,509 million in 2023—an increase of roughly 45% and Indian-national departures reached 30.89 million in 2024, compared with 26.92 million in 2019, before the pandemic. In 2025, the figure increased further to 32.83 million, according to the Ministry’s current tourism dashboard. The data shows the growing interest of public in travel and tourism. Many goes to explore new things whereas a lot of people also move out. The reason behind is simply “A better lifestyle” or “A better life standards” (4)
The stressful lifestyle today, the long working hours demands time to figure things out especially for the generation which is focusing on things deeply, who needs time to understand everything. Whenever things gets complicated they need some time and whenever they get some time they chose to go for travelling or to go on a vacation to reset their mind.
The core idea is not simply that we should travel. Rather it’s that amidst the rush and chaos of our daily life, the monotonous routine of our lives we should make space for something that gives us time to reconnect with ourselves, to pay attention to the beauty that is within us and outside in the surrounding which we didn’t get time to gaze at.
If life has become a web that we find ourselves trapped in, then shouldn’t our lifestyle be designed to step out of that web rather than to get more entangled in it. Exploring/ Travelling is one such way to look at your life in a more interesting yet. A famous quote of Pico Lyer says “ We travel, initially to lose ourselves; and we travel next to, find ourselves”
The question is not that we should travel more but whether we have forgotten to take a break, to pause. In the life which is increasingly demanding our time. The deadlines, responsibilities and routine. We often measure our day with how much we accomplish. We have failed as an individual to understand that life is not only measured by how much we are doing daily rather it’s about how we are feeling after doing all. Are we actually happy? It’s about creating space for things that makes us feel alive.
Travel to new places, meet new people, understand their pschycology, the way they think and and see world. Adopt what resonates you. Moreover just make memories in everything you do because at the end No assignments, no deadlines are going to be remembered it’s how you lived your life that’s actually counts.
By: Anjali
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