Why Walking is Important

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

– Anthony Bourdain

“Visiting a new place is scary, but here are some top tips to make the most of your travel experience.”

This is what every trained media professional or influencer will tell you when trying to show you the beauty of a place through rose-coloured glasses, in which they show themselves on top of a mountain or walking through a bright, bustling market. The “but” obscures the actual process of arriving in a place and being faced with the fears and insecurities that come with being a foreigner, and the fact that you are usually being perceived by all those around you. Or that’s what my mind tricks me into thinking.

The truth is, people will look but won’t remember. The glance you think is judging you is extremely temporary before the person continues on with their day. They are thinking of their own issues and tasks that need doing instead of considering your clothes, origin or when you last showered. It really is that simple.

I know that this is something I still need to work on, as a consistent solo traveller. There will always be those days when anxiety takes over and the minute details start to worry me, which quickly turns into worries about my clothing, hair, body and general appearance. I want to be friendly but not too approachable, stylish but comfy, and aware but also accepting that I am tired and don’t want to put too much effort into these things. 

This is where I like to repeat the phrase “it’s not that serious” to myself and put the brain capacity I have towards enjoying the present; a reminder that I can control this one moment, which means I can also control the next, and the next. When I tell myself this, I also know I am capable in this moment. This moment is something I have experienced before in some form or other, even if the details don’t match completely, so I am in control of my emotions and body. And it helps. No matter how temporary, it helps.

Stepping off a train into an unfamiliar but stunning train station is exhilarating in its own way. I enjoy this more than the stress of the airport since I have my luggage with me and no irrational fear of being detained at passport control. The train station is a crossroads for travellers all over the world to actually walk across each other’s paths, or even walk the same paths as those from a hundred years before, to take a carriage made of glass and metal to a new place that may be a short distance or several countries away. It is a place I know I feel most excited to see before the destination itself, and it’s even better when you have time to sit and watch families, couples, and individuals make their way to their high-speed carriages of choice.

I think another reason why train travel is so much easier is its ease and ability to glide between hills, through valleys and beside rivers, all from the comfort of a single seat. A plane requires so much force on takeoff and landing, along with the added turbulence and the feeling of being trapped high in the air, making it a transport option that is both comfortable and uncomfortable. Trains allow travel to a lesser distance; however, watching the world float by on the ground cannot be replicated anywhere else, and slower travel allows for a greater appreciation of distance and scale. 

I’ve gone off topic.

When finally arriving at that train station or airport of that destination and you have found that bed for the night in a hostel or hotel, you are hoping lives up to the reviews you read online, the next thing to do is to go for a walk. To really know a place, I recommend going for a walk in whatever direction takes your fancy and simply going. I don’t look at a map or choose a destination at the beginning. I start walking for at least an hour without navigating because I want to pay attention to the details of a place first.

Without a map, I have the freedom to explore without worrying about a necessary direction or the ‘need’ to get anywhere and may recognise a beautiful town house, a colourfully decorated museum or a quaint restaurant spilling onto the street, the aromatic smells lingering in the air. It’s freeing and something I started to adopt every time I travelled solo because it would usually lead me to things I never would have found or paid attention to. After the hour is up, I can look at my phone or a map and decide on a specific monument, bakery, etc. then, but I had that first hour to just follow my nose and see how it feels to walk around a new area as a stranger, because that is what I am. And it is still something I am trying not to be ashamed of.

I feel so often, as someone who identifies as a solo traveller, or for lack of a better word, ‘tourist’, that we must apologise for our presence in a place we would not normally fit simply because we are different. If you applied that logic to regular societal standards, you would find it stupid because difference is so often celebrated, however, there are many times I felt as though by visiting a new country that I was intruding on a way of life that I had no business seeing. When you view a place as a way to learn about the world, a different way of life and purely from the standpoint of someone curious and non-judgmental, there is no harm you can inflict and therefore no reason to feel ashamed of being foreign.

There are also a great many people who welcome those who are different because they, too, are curious as to your origins and the reasons why you chose to visit their small part of the world. This is often where the greatest interactions come from and the ones that will nourish your life because it gives you glimpses of why you sustain the belief that people are inherently good. That the few people who may have hurt you in life are just that. The few. Not the many.

I have said before that I think everyone should spend at least a month in a place that is entirely removed from their home culture, to really understand how differently people live in other parts of the world. I think living in one place consistently can have its advantages, but it often makes us feel as though that is all there is to the world. I also understand that it is not that simple and that many cannot financially afford to travel further afield, but that doesn’t mean that the attempt at understanding should be abandoned. If someone is new to your way of living, I hope you would do your best to understand how they live differently and accept these differences for the beautiful uniqueness they show to you.

I know that I choose to travel because I want to experience as many different ways of life as I can, because I believe that I will then be able to understand my own life better and the way I want to live it. Because if I stayed in one place, with the same people in the same house, with the same values, that is all I would know and what a shame it would be not to know and experience as much as possible in this life.

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