This being Expedition Portal, we interact with a sizable audience of travelers. We publish their stories, draw on their first-hand expertise, and simply enjoy hearing of their adventures from around the world. We are also––travelers ourselves and as such we travel by way of our own chosen means to destinations we feel speak to us. Going one step further, we each have our own style of travel. We’ve all heard that somewhat corny phrase about the journey being the destination, but is it possible that’s not entirely true?
Overlanders in particular are prone to place an elevated importance on the traverse, the point-to-point route, the conquest of a defined chunk of Earth. We also favor circumnavigations, first-evers, and even records of speed. Oft connecting extreme ends of a continent, country, state or even a singular stretch of road, our journeys are frequently designed to complete an objective, even at the sacrifice of the overall experience. It seems wholly incongruent with the premise of adventure travel, but it does seem to consume an inordinately large sector of our travel community.
Amy and Buck of Great Ride of China set out to break a world record and did so with their 35,000km ride.
At the recent Overland Expo I had a lengthy chat with a young British couple who had just completed the drive from Maine to Flagstaff in eight days. Their goal was to eventually arrive in Anchorage in the next eight days. When I asked them what they liked most about visiting the States thus far, they glanced at each other in what appeared to be a desperate plea for help. Their week-long drive across the greater U.S. had yielded nothing of experiential benefit outside of a lot of windshield time. They admitted they got too fixated on the traverse of the U.S. and forgot to slow down to actually enjoy it. It reminded me of those packaged European vacations that were so popular in the early 90s. The sales pitch promised a dozen countries in as many days. Have you really visited England if all you did is blow through it on a bus in 36 hours?
All of this makes me think of a handful of overlanders, many of whom you have become acquainted with through various Expedition Portal features. Coen and Karin-Marijke are classic examples of the immersed traveler. While they do plot a course through countries and continents that could be considered a traverse, they take years to connect those ends. Their preferred mode of travel allows them to delve into the textured subtleties of a given area to extract the richest experiences possible. They meet locals, make temporary and lasting friendships, and assimilate to the culture within its own natural rhythms. It makes me reflect on my own trip to Corsica when my rental car fell through and instead of spending five days circumnavigating the island, because that seemed like the thing to do, I was forced to have a far superior experience as a temporary resident of Ajaccio, walking the streets, seeing the city in a far more intimate exchange.
On the road for a decade, the duo of Coen and Karin-Marijke travel slowly, soaking it all in as they go.
The beauty of travel is that it is what you make of it. If your greatest satisfaction comes from connecting two far distant points simply for the sake of it, there is nothing to devalue that experience. When I asked a friend about his bicycle ride across Mongolia, he said it was, “thirty days of same.” Every day was a near repeat of the prior. He also said it was one of the most validating endeavors of his life despite the fact it may have lacked a varied depth of experiences. Another friend of mine set out to drive to the ends of the earth only to get consumed by the allure of Central America where his travels stopped and became his temporary home. I would even call that immersed travel––staying in one spot for two years before moving on.
At the root of it, there probably is a balance to be struck between meeting a travel objective and creating the optimal travel experience. If you had a month to travel, would you spend it traversing all of Asia or just visiting Vietnam? Which is the better experience? Is this all a matter of deciding how far to go, and how much to see? Is the better trip one of accomplishment or enrichment. Is a slow and serpentine journey any less significant than a straight and fast trajectory across a challenging expanse of land? The answers, only you have to give.
