A friend recently returned from Nepal complaining about "too many tourists in Kathmandu"; mass tourism, "Coca Cola in the Himalayas", and pre-packaged "adventure" tours. He concluded sadly that globalization is making travel so easy that there's "no place left to explore".
His feelings are understandable. We live in a global age. Many of us feel too connected to the rest of the world and travel to get away from things. We want adventure and it's easy to think that the further we go from home, the deeper, more exciting and authentic our experience will be.
But of course it's not that easy.
In his rush towards the exotic, my friend is forgetting that how we travel is at least as important as the particular destination we choose. Adventure depends on the state of mind we take with us, and how we deal with challenges we find. Even in our shrinking world--particularly in our shrinking world--travel can teach us wonders if we ask deeper questions about our destinations and about the perceptual baggage that we bring from home.
So I propose a deep culture journey.
A deep culture journey is one whose goal is learning about the self through learning about others. It involves an attempt to understand the everyday life in new places as seen from the point of view of our hosts. We learn not from going further but from looking more carefully. By setting aside judgments, by engaging more fully with the people we meet, and by looking beneath the surface of our experiences, we enter into new cultural worlds.