A while back, I started a post entitled something like The Seven Tenets of Travel. The number is irrelevant as it was intended more to be a work in progress. My plan was to propose to my fellow travelers a few concepts, mindsets, etc. that I felt were important to safe, fulfilling travel. Like a Ten Commandments but without all of the God and everlasting burning in hell mumbo-jumbo. I had no intention of taking it too seriously, but I still felt the whole idea was too presumptuous and thus, I scrapped it.
RoadJunky recently had a few thoughts on this which I largely agree with:
[T]hanks to the Lonely Planet and the rest of the middle of the road, bourgeois guidebooks, every traveler and backpacker hits the road with a firm list of principles and concepts about how to behave abroad.The traveler’s moral code these days consists of various sententious notions:
- One must support sustainable travel
- One mustn’t haggle too much
- One must never give money to children, only perhaps school pens and sweets
While it’s perhaps too harsh of a criticism against LP – who I believe to be well-intentioned folks – it’s not altogether off the mark.
The main take-away from their short post is their response to the arrogant moral “code” that many travel guides have unintentionally created:
The reality is that on the road there are plenty of people willing to charge ten times the price to naive travelers, everyone catches planes because they’re convenient and some kids could really do with the money. There is no one right response.
This piggybacks on something I wrote a few weeks ago – mainly that travel is and should be whatever you want it to be. There’s no right way, reason, or means to travel. It’s inevitably a learning and growth experience. Thoughtful folks who “violate” some vague moral travel code will likely learn from their mistakes along the way and correct as necessary.
Self-centered people who violate said code with reckless abandon and never care to learn from their mistakes are probably a-holes anyway. And how likely is it that some travel guide is going to convince them to act properly abroad while they’re perfectly content conducting themselves improperly back home?
Rumour has it that forthcoming editions of the Lonely Planet will have cut-out halos for the holier-than-thou traveler ”¦
Okay, that’s a bit over the line. But it made me laugh nonetheless …