Are You a Traveller or a Tourist?

chillibreeze writer — Suneetha

The Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary defines “Tourism” as “the business of providing tourists with hotels, special trips etc”. So to define Tourism, I now need to look at who or what a tourist is! A tourist, according to the same dictionary, is a person who visits places for pleasure. So, the tourist obviously has to make up his mind on what sort of pleasure he is looking for, and where he will go in search for it.

The average tourist will reserve his time and money for that longed-for-sight of the snow capped Himalayas, or the Dal lake or of the Taj Mahal by moonlight. He will spent hours pouring over the railway timetable, at the railway reservation counter, patiently browsing tourist guides, and brochures of tour operators and decide on the best bargain. He will probably see the Taj Mahal at midday in August, the heat making him run over the marble, spend uncomfortable nights in a “video coach” on the way to the next destination and get indigestion eating at way side eateries, patronized by the coach staff. Back in his hometown after a hectic fortnight, he will talk of the Taj Mahal and Brindavan over lunch to his less fortunate fellow beings, exhibit unfocused color pictures of the whole family in front of the frowning snow-yak, and spend sleepless nights on how to convince the clerk in the LTC section over the number of kilometres travelled. He will never ever spend an unscheduled day at Jaipur to have another evening at the “Chowkidani”, or simply fall with abandon in the snow, with no thought to missing a bus back to the “luxury hotel”. For this simple pleasure he will have to change his label a little; from the Tourist to the Traveller.

Have you ever thought which part of the tour you enjoy most, the trip or the destination? The art of travel demands that you enjoy the trip as much as or maybe even more than the destination. There may be legitimate reasons for visiting well-known tourist sites. Millions of people cannot be wrong about the beauty of Kovalam beach or Konarak Temple. But there is a road and a destination beyond the obvious; the unchartered and unscheduled pleasures can be the most exciting. The point of travelling is to experience different places and customs as they are. There is no point in globetrotting if you make no attempt to see more than just the tourist trail. It is much more interesting and fun to spend a few hours with the truck driver who picked you up hitch hiking than a family who you met in the Volvo bus of the travel agency. The dabba gives you much more of a culinary feel of the place of visit than a prim and proper restaurant. But I must not forget that I am a Tourist, who travels within a budget and not a Traveller who has all the time and money at his disposal.

Maybe when I have finally won that KBC crore, you will see me along the roads of Goa, wandering from beach to beach for days together in search of that elusive conch-shell.

I will then be a Traveller, not a Tourist!

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Suneetha writes for Chillibreeze

Are You a Traveller or a Tourist?

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