There are three kinds of rewards you can bring back from your travels:
· TOURISTS spend money -- and return with souvenirs.
· TRAVELLERS really open their eyes and their hearts -- and return with experiences.
· EXPLORERS ask questions or pose challenges -- and return with understanding.
For tourists, the high point of each day's travel is the opportunity to buy things - whether it's at a tacky gift shop or at one of Paris' finest coutier's. They may be looking for nothing more than a knick-knack Statue of Liberty or Mohican bead bracelet -- or they may have researched the best place to purchase exquisite clothing or furniture. But they measure their success in terms of the things they bring back - things they can wear, display, or give as gifts.
There's nothing wrong with this, of course. Ever since Marco Polo, travelers have taken to the road to find objects unobtainable in their home city or country. And learning how to judge the best things available can be a rewarding lesson in appreciation and even connoisseurship.
Travellers seek more - they want human experiences rather than just the best things.
Having real experiences is often a challenge because many trips are pre-planned these days. As a visitor to a new city or country you find yourself placed for your "comfort" in hotels and restaurants and other venues that largely replicate what you already know.
So if you seek to have adventures, you need to make a concerted effort to "jump the tracks" - to escape from what you're expected to want and do and see, to explore the unexpected.
On a recent trip to San Francisco with my partner Beatrice Gross, for instance, after checking into the posh Fairmont (I wasn't paying), we purposely set forth without a guidebook to find dinner.
But on the short walk from the hotel to Chinatown, we stumbled on a group of policemen dressed as Chinese dragons, waiting outside a Seniors' Center where they were going to entertain the clients with the New Year's Dance of the Dragons. So we took an hour to sit in on their performance, with help in understanding what was going on from the willing seniors around us, eager to induct the only two non-Asians in the room, into their exhilarating celebration.
Then, pressing on for dinner, we ended up buying it at a storefront kitchen which gave us more than we could eat of delicious Asian cuisine for… are you sitting down: $3.80 US. Moreover, the scene as nearby workers came in for their dinner was delightful, since the clientele consisted entirely of workers from adjacent stores and offices.
To go even further - to become an Explorer -- you have go a step beyond having adventures. You need to respond to those adventures with creativity and reflectiveness. "Experience is not what happens to us," declared Aldous Huxley. "It is what we MAKE of what happens to us."