This entry is a essentially rant. I am sick of hearing people telling me : you should travel more, don't always stay in the mountains. There is a reason why I travel not as often as I used to be. Not that I hate travel, on the contrary, I adore adventures. I had booked a one-way ticket, flied to Sicily alone and slowly figured my way back to Grenoble; I had travelled to India for a month with my mom without any planning beforehand; I had travelled to Tunisia during its unstable time after Arab Spring without any planning; and I had hitchhiked multiple times in several countries.
By mentioning all the above, I have to admit that I might have the intention to brag. But all I mentioned are stories, great stories even. That's exactly the point of travel for me : stories. As travelling is getting easier and easier, I have seen too many people travel to places and all they care about are beautiful photos, photos that are later to be posted on social media to impress other people they don't know. However breathtaking the scenery is, they won't trully know because they are busy looking at their cameras and selfie stick, trying to get the right angle for the perfect shot. And then move back to hotel as soon as possible, with wifi go back into their own bubble with their phones.
A quote from a movie I love so much, The Beach, pretty much sums up my thought,
The only downer is, everyone's got the same idea. We all travel thousands of miles just to watch TV and check in to somewhere with all the comforts of home, and you gotta ask yourself, what is the point of that?
I don't hate travel, I just hate tourists-consumers I meet during the travel. Photographer-wannabes with huge cameras and tripods, narcissistic technology-slaves with their selfie sticks, youngsters who have no intention to be there but dragged by their parents to travel with them and now complaining about internet connection, all of them are pollutants, or like how they are described in The Beach, parasites.
Recently I read an article which inspired me to write this entry. It is in French but I find the final paragraphe really true, from which I quote and translate,
If travelling has became a to-do-list to cross out, then travelling doesn't make you an interesting person.
I still travel, but not to famous places anymore. I try to avoid easily accessible tourist hotspot, and travel more and more to places not many people know. That is why I stayed for only a few hours in JiuFen, an incredibly popular spot in Taiwan, but stayed for four full days in Kinmen, a tiny rural island where foreigners are rarity.
That is also why I prefer to stay in Grenoble mountains during the holidays, spending most of my time doing outdoor sports. Alpine mountains fit the inaccessible criteria, the scenery is always amazing, and sport and nature are good for health. To get a beautiful view, one has to climb. In that way, mountains always ensure an experience, the one that takes your breathe away, literally and figuratively. People you meet in the mountains tend to be very friendly. Since everyone is sharing the same experience, you can feel the connection between you and them, eventhough they are strangers to you.
To many ignorant people, I might seem like a hermit in my mountainous shell. May be I am, but at least it is still better than a pollutant, a parasite.
