Rediscover the world on your own terms
The recent uncertainty around borders has meant that travel has taken a backseat, right at a time when it was the most accessible it had ever been.
As we begin to optimistically dust off our luggage, scrummage for our passports, and renew our airline memberships, how do we ensure we make the most of our trips now that we know not to take them for granted?
From advice on how to accurately understand new places to practical tips on meeting with locals, overcoming the language barrier, and asking the right questions, Travel Your Way shows you how to discover the world on your own terms. The result is a more rewarding journey and a greater sense of connection to everywhere you go, whether you’re on a business trip, or backpacking across the globe.
Extracts from ‘Travel Your Way’ by Nathan James Thomas
In the chapter, ‘Find Your Magic’, Nathan talks about how the magic of travel can be found anywhere, even on the rural roads of Dunedin at 3am.
Chapter 13: Find Your Magic
The commodification of travel as a break from our normal lives has meant that many of us have basically forgotten how to do it. We are so used to functioning in ‘normal life’ without taking an excessive interest in the world around us except as it relates to our own interests and ambitions, that the curiosity switch is rusty. We are so used to seeing the working day as a series of duties to be efficiently dispatched that we have forgotten how to indulge in the promise of the moment. We are constantly exhorted to make plans and set goals that we have lost the ability to be spontaneous, say yes to a random opportunity, and gleefully end up somewhere we never expected to be. Tour companies have attempted to artificially package ‘travel’, to bottle the magic. But real travel cannot be planned. It cannot be scripted. It cannot be ‘designed’. It happens when you allow it to. And in order to allow it to, you need to get high, high on the promise of the world and the lust for adventure and discovery.
Once you have tapped into this magic, there’s little you can do. If you aren’t travelling it will eat you up inside. So you have to go and find travel wherever you are. We have talked often in this book about how the principles and attitudes of travel can still endure when at home. So too can this magic.
While at university in the isolated South Island town of Dunedin at the bottom of New Zealand, miles from anywhere, I channelled this need for travel into long night-time drives in my 1989 Honda Concerto. Often in the company of a similarly insomniac friend, we would show up at 3 a.m. in small seaside towns, sharing the road with trucks, sheep and occasionally penguins, feeling as if the whole world were ours.
Travel exists anywhere and everywhere. You cannot pretend that you don’t hear the call.
Prefer Audio?
Throughout the book there are ‘Travel Practice’ exercises to help you get ready for your next adventure, we have included one below narrated by Nathan James Thomas himself from the audio book edition of Travel Your Way.
TRAVEL PRACTICE
Be a traveller, even when you’re at home
