Five reasons why life on the road doesn’t suck

by Sean McLachlan on

A few days ago our roving reporter in China talked about “Five reasons why life on the road can really suck.” Her points were:
1. It can be difficult to make deeper connections with people.
2. People at home go on with their lives, and you become less and less a part of them.
3. Sometimes it feels like your life is standing still.
4. You can’t commit to any one thing, and so never experience anything fully
5. You continually have experiences that you simply can’t convey to folks who aren’t with you.

Valid points, every one of them, but I think her epic Chinese bus tour has left her a little worn out because there’s a positive flip side to each of these.

1. You can make deeper connections with people, it’s just harder (and therefore more worthwhile).
It’s true that being on the road means you usually don’t stay long enough to make lasting relationships, but that’s not always the case. If you settle down for a few days or weeks you can get to know some of the local people and you can keep in touch with them after you go. I was doing this even before everyone had email, and it’s a whole lot easier now. Sometimes people pop up out of your past totally unexpected. I made a good friend in Quetta, Pakistan, who I corresponded with for a couple of years. Eventually that correspondence faded away, but just this year he Googled me and got in touch! He lives in Europe now so we may even get to meet up.

2. If you and some of your friends drift apart, so be it.
Nothing lasts forever, not friends, not relationships, not even travel. We either move apart or we die (oh, that was cheery!). Travel brings new perspectives, a new lifestyle, and new associations. Yes, some of those old connections may fade away, but if you choose to have a different lifestyle than they do, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. And the real friends will always be there.

3. Your life is never standing still.
It just may not be progressing along the same lines as the clock-punchers back home. If you choose to spend your twenties wandering the world like I did, your thirties will probably not be as financially stable as some of your friends’, nor will your career be as advanced, unless, of course, your career is tied to travel. I went from being an archaeologist to a writer, so I was able to make my career progress while on the road. If I had wanted to be a lawyer or manage a company, I’d be screwed.

4. Give your trip focus, and you will experience things fully.
Travelers, no matter how leisurely they explore a country, are still just passing through. Despite having wandered all over Damascus I never saw it except in winter. Is it much different in springtime? I don’t know. I also haven’t seen its great transformation after the huge influx of Iraqi refugees. On the other hand, I have a sound knowledge of Islamic architecture and medieval castles, two big interests of mine. All through my travels in the Middle East I went to every mosque or castle I could find. That was my continuity, that and endless cups of tea during endless conversations in an endless string of cafes. Good conversationalists, the Arabs.

5. It’s OK to keep some memories for yourself.
It would be nice to fully share all our travel experiences with our loved ones, but to do that they’d have to come along for the ride, and even then their experiences would be different because they have different perceptions. We’re each on our own road through this life, whether we’re world travelers or couch potatoes. You can’t share everything with everybody. In fact, some of my most treasured travel memories are incidents I’ve never told anyone because they would never believe me!

A final note
Catherine, sooner or later there’s a fork in the road and we choose one way or the other. If we haven’t gone too far down one way we can always scurry back and try to catch up with the folks on the other path. I’ve known some people who did that.
Or we can forge on ahead. Every choice has its pluses and minuses, even being a globetrotting writer has its downsides. Believe me, I know. But I’ve never regretted my decision, and I have the feeling you haven’t either.
So don’t despair, you just have a case of the traveler’s blues. We all get it, but the road will offer up an instant cure with some magnificent sight or encounter. It’s probably done that for you already.

The secret activities of The Ritz-Carlton – Poll

by Annie Scott on


This past weekend when I was checking out the Ritz-Carlton’s event capabilities, I attended several presentations, including one on the ways the luxury hotel chain is continuing to expand and improve.

Not going into much detail, the Ritz-Carlton representative talked about packages called Give Back Getaways, Meaningful Meetings, A Vow to Help Others and VolunTeaming — I hadn’t heard of any of those before. One catchphrase he also mentioned (which did ring a bell) was Community Footprints, aka the Ritz-Carlton’s commitment to doing good things for the local communities they occupy.

With a little Googling, I found the Community Footprints website, which lists some of the above programs as well as their “Human Rights Policy Statement.”

I was not the only one who felt that this important stuff was glossed over in the presentation (which talked more about how the RC has expanded from 32 to 74 hotels in the last nine years and that they are developing a new concept called Ritz-Carlton Reserve, which will be a series of smaller, more intimate hotels). In the question and answer section at the end, many of my fellow attendees wanted to know more about all these great things the Ritz-Carlton was doing — and helping guests to do — for the environment and their local communities.

Then I learned something. Senior Vice President Ezzat Coutry responded with “We are very careful about bragging about what we do for the communities.”
What? Don’t they know that if travelers knew how much work they’re putting into their communities (we’re talking $8.55 million in cash and in-kind donations and 57,000 hours of volunteering in 2008 alone!), it would make them look good?

Yes. They do know that. And they’re way ahead of us. “We struggle with that,” Coutry continued, “We do something great — do we say it or not?”

“We don’t want it to appear self-serving,” added Verona Carter, Area Director of Public Relations for Mexico and the Caribbean.

Here’s what I learned — in my career-long quest to find out what’s cool and great and tell everybody, getting information about the good stuff some larger companies like the Ritz-Carlton are doing has often felt like pulling teeth. I never really understood why getting the information was so hard; why there weren’t fabulous press releases and huge celebrations … and it turns out that the answer is simple modesty.

In this age, where we crave more corporate transparency, do we just want to know the bad things that our large chains are doing, or do we want to know the good things? Does the fact that the Ritz-Carlton is so actively working on sustainability and the well-being of their communities make you like them more — and if they’d advertised it (above and beyond it just being there on the website if you go looking), would you feel differently?

Well, in any case, the word’s out now. What do you think?
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TripSay and the world of “travel 2.0” (score a beta invite from Gadling)

by Jeremy Kressmann on

The web has already created all sorts of great ways for travelers to connect and share information. Sites like Dopplr let you share details on where you’re going with your friends, while Wikitravel has brought us the next generation of collaboratively-created travel guides.

But these types of interactive travel sites are only the beginning. A new generation of user-driven travel portals promises to combine travel opinions with searchable maps, images, tagging capabilities and intuitive recommendation systems. One of the more interesting of this new crop of sites is TripSay. TripSay, which is still in private beta mode, promises to let users create their own personalized travel profiles, as well as to rank and create recommendations from their travels. As you begin to add friends to your travel network and further define your preferred traveling style, TripSay customizes its content to your interests. Think of it like Trip Advisor on steroids. Recently, Gadling was lucky enough to snag an invite to the private beta testing and take the site for a spin.

On first glance, TripSay offers a relatively easy-to-use interface. When you first sign-up, you’re asked to rate some of the places you’ve visited, assigning them a ranking on a five point scale from “smiley” down to my favorite, “butt.” You’re also able to further tweak your profile on the basis of travel style, including identifiers like whether you lean towards budget or luxury travel, your language abilities and previous travel experience.

Since I’m headed to Japan in a few weeks, I decided to see what the site had to say about Tokyo. TripSay loaded up a map of the city, already dotted with markers indicating sites of interest. I clicked on the marker for the Tokyo Tower, which brought up an overview of the building, along with a random photo of it pulled from Flickr. Since the site hasn’t yet launched, there are only a few markers, but I can see the potential. Any user can add their own tips to the map, categorizing them into such topics as “eat, drink and party,” “culture,” “nature” and “amusement” among others. As you add more travel friends, the markers that appear on your map are tailored to reflect the suggestions of your friends and your particular preferences.

Any great travel experience is ultimately a product of both spontaneous epiphany and reliable information. That information can come from any number of sources – a guidebook, the web or even word of mouth. TripSay looks to be an interesting hybrid of all three. However, its success will ultimately depend on its community of users, who will provide the site’s appeal and content. Want to help them get things started? Leave us a comment below and we’ll randomly select five winners early next week to get invites.

[Note: comments have now been turned off. Thanks to everyone for expressing their interest!]