Tourism: Travel Because You Can

Former Director-General of UNESCO, Federico Mayor, asked “What better way than tourism to promote understanding between peoples by inspiring admiration for the shared natural and cultural heritage?”

Today people travel more than ever, and international tourism is growing fast. When I was a little girl, my family traveled a lot. Usually our trips included a camper van, and brought us to different camping sites around Finland and other Nordic countries. I remember being unhappy that we did not spend our holidays in cooler places, like on the beaches of Spain or Greece.

Tourism: Travel Because You Can

My first trips without my parents were my primary school’s exchange programs to Lithuania and the United States. Since then, I have been fortunate to take short-term and long-term trips, and have loved every minute of them.

For me, traveling has become a way of life. What better way to break away from routines than by discovering new perspectives by traveling? By getting to know a new culture, we also learn more about ourselves. It’s a cliché, but I appreciate my home country way more than I did before I started traveling. I’ve become more patient, and brave. My experiences abroad have also increased my empathy for global inequality.

What better way to break away from routines than to discover new perspectives by traveling?

I have climbed Machu Picchu wearing flip flops. I’ve gone bungee jumping in New Zealand. I’ve seen the most beautiful night sky in Whitsunday Islands, and the most beautiful sunset in Bali. I’ve wandered the colorful villages of Morocco, danced salsa in the streets of Huanchaco, and disappeared into the 1950s in Cuba. I have drunk tea with the local tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka, eaten the best street food there is in Vietnam, and drunk the tastiest beer in Laos. I have snowboarded in the snowy mountains of Switzerland, walked in the beautiful fjords of Norway, and cycled around the villages of Cambodia.

These types of experiences evoke feelings that are difficult to explain to others. People must experience them for themselves. The world is open for us to admire its wonders, and to get to know its different cultures, languages, values, surroundings, and lifestyles, so why not travel and explore?

Tourism: Travel Because You Can

People are never guaranteed old age, so my advice is to enjoy the opportunities the world has to offer as soon as possible because, as Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

Photo credit by Unsplash.