Ash Bhardwaj’s latest book dives into the ‘why’ behind our love of travelling – and how our curiosity to explore should be deeply understood
By Chris Fitch
A billion and a half international trips per year, a US$10 trillion industry supporting more than 300 million jobs worldwide; humanity’s urge to travel powers a huge slice of the global economy. But why so many people choose to spend so much to travel so much is a less-explored question.
Travel writer Ash Bhardwaj has some ideas. In this intriguing part-essay collection, part-memoir, he recalls an eclectic mix of journeys from his own life, and reviews them through the lens of 12 motivations that he identifies to understand why he – or we – might wish to travel.
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The observation, for example, that curiosity can be at the heart of a desire to travel is both obvious and quietly radical. Like with great storytelling, the prospect of an unvisited place can leave us with an unsatisfying ‘information gap’, that can only be filled by taking a journey, powered by our curiosity. Bhardwaj experienced this through a boyhood trip to New Zealand, exposing him to a new culture and shattering his preconceptions in the process.
Equally, he found serendipity in Uganda, building relationships with remote communities who just so happened to be huge fans of Arsenal football club, and developed empathy while walking the ‘Iron Curtain’, to try to truly understand how Estonians, Belarusians and Ukrainians felt about Russia’s imperial ambitions.
Bhardwaj encourages us to better understand these deep psychological motivations. To think about the motivations behind why we might wish to travel – whether travelling together to strengthen an important relationship, taking psychedelic substances to deal with trauma, undertaking pilgrimages infused with tradition and nostalgia to pay tribute to departed loved ones, or something completely different – and what we personally hope to get out of it.
‘Of all the experiences that travel has given me,’ Bhardwaj writes, ‘it has most enriched my life by becoming the pathway to knowing myself and others.’
