Learning by Travelling
Travelling is a source of instruction, education, .and joy. Man’s curiosity wants to know about new things, places, people and cultures. To satisfy this urge man reads books and travels taking great risks. This desire led Columbus and Vasco-de-Gaeta to discover America and India. When printing had not been discovered travellers played a crucial role in carrying around news and new information’s. The people of cities and villages gathered around the visiting travellers and learnt about new happenings in other lands. The travellers also revealed the mysteries of other people, customs, cultures, products and trade.
Thus, travel has been an exercise to gain education and joys of adventure. No amount of information on a place or people in written words cans be substitute to a personal visit to a place. The real experiences and-getting a feel practically is much more thrilling and educative. Remaining rooted at a place or a routine dulls one’s power of perception. Going and coming everyday to and from the same residence to same work place along the same route make us lose interest in surroundings. We stop noticing any changes taking place around us. So boring the scene becomes. On the other hand travelling revives our interest in surroundings. Our power of observation suddenly gets sharpened up in new environment. It notices everything to the minute details. The curiosity about the new scene makes us alert and we start making mental notes of everything we see. This process smartens us up and we are no more dull minded. Later on, it reflects in our work, business and life.
A man rooted to a place becomes like a frog of the well who is so narrow minded that for it the mouth of the well is last frontiers of the universe. Mental horizon of a non-traveller shrinks. A traveller sees the mind boggling diversity of the world in all aspects. His thinking expands and new experiences enrich his life. He gets chances to interact with different people to soak in alien wisdom’s, hearing and learning different languages, eating, different social cultures and their beauties. He educates himself from what he sees in political and the social institutions of other lands.
In a diverse country like India, a ‘citizen who has not travelled to the parts other than his own region remains an incomplete Indian or very little Indian. The real India is outside his small region or narrow ethnic circle. Our country is an ocean of cultures, linguistic groups, regional sections, religious communities, and sects inside and outside those communities, customs, traditions, beliefs, races, colour divides and racial formations.
Thus, an Indian who does not travel never knows what it takes to be an Indian and remains very little Indian. When an Indian visits just the opposite part of the country he sees the region’s problems at ground level and realizes how wrong he was in his earlier stand and how unreasonable. He learns to look at a problem from another’s point of view.
We generally read about the historic and other monuments in books or see them on T.V. They remain in our minds as only abstract collection of words or just images. Seeing them in real is thrilling. You can feel the spirit and touch them. It is like meeting a person, a four dimensions experience. The spirit of adventure within gets satisfied.
In the course of travels one often chances to visit far-flung places not connected by any transport and is full of challenges. But travellers don’t feel it taxing. Infect, there is a joy of conquering the distance and overcoming the difficulties. Adventure seeking travellers love tracking, mountain climbing, rafting and outdoor camping.
The inland travelling strengthens national integration and inculcates understanding. Travels abroad teach one the unity of the mankind. The thrill of being at a new place, amidst strange people and sharing exotic food with them is almost like that of a child in a toyshop. Travelling fills one with unique sense of freedom, no more bound by constraints of time and space.
Even illiterate persons can get educated by travelling and observing things. Such learning stays in mind for ever. Most of the ancient sea adventurers were illiterate people. But their oral accounts of the voyages and experiences are treasures of mankind put in printed words. It is matter of satisfaction that our people are not taking to travelling more and more within the country and abroad.
