All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
In part-1 of my ‘Brief History of Travel’ article, I had penned down some of the motives for humans to travel, right from when our homo sapiens species moved out of Africa over 100,000 years ago up to the end of the Second World War in 1945 AD. These motives ranged from seeking shelter due to climate change during the Ice Age, to tracking moving food as hunter-gathers, then settling down for agriculture, making mega cities and civilisations, travelling for trade and conquest and, later, to spread new religions around the planet. Post this came the age of intrepid travellers seeking adventure and new knowledge, and finding new lands across oceans and also doing scientific and academic research as much as commerce in (or conquest of) these ‘new found’ places. All this led to the last of the geographic exploration records being set on Earth in the early part of the 20th century with the epic stories of heroic explorers such as Earnest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, Robert Scott (Antarctic) and Fridtjof Nansen, Robert Peary, Matthew Henson (Arctic). We also had brave hearts and legends such as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay (Mt Everest) and Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh (Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep), who risked it all to reach the highest and lowest points on Earth. But as these last ‘firsts’ were being set, the age of organised tours and mass tourism was gaining speed, built upon the expanding transport infrastructure and our insatiable thirst to move as a perpetually restless species. In part-2 of this article, I will cover the last 75 plus years since 1945.
So, the two ‘great’ wars were over (WW-I & II) and humans around the world were in rebuilding mode and economic prosperity, peace and happiness took centre stage in the lives of millions coming out of the rubble and wreckage of the first part of the 20th century. Since tourism is a function of time and money in the hands of the traveller, and political and social stability at the destination, most of the world was ready for this great act of human movement, with world prosperity and globalisation as never before, especially in the then United States. The age of unequal abundance was about to begin. Commercial flights of the 1950s (starting with the iconic Boeing 707) just connected it all together and complemented rail and road. In the next few decades, the prices of air transport also fell due to competition in the developed countries, giving a further boost to global tourism. Finally, by the 1970s, it seemed that nearly all in America and Europe had their handy travel guides (such as Fodors, Lonely Planet, and, later, Rick Stevens) and independent long-term travel boomed. Even the ‘not super-rich’ started travelling, in what we can call the start of democratisation of travel within the wealthy nations.
The age of the internet was about to dawn in the 1990s and, a decade later, at the turn of the 21st century, it would take the world by storm. This is when the true global democratisation of travel would take place, the real inclusion which the UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization) speaks of. Now the ‘trickledown economics’ could take place and you had lots of budget hotels, hostels, B&Bs, and homestays mushrooming everywhere, all connected by the far reach of the internet cables. The meteoric rise of Air B&B is a case in point. Travel companies and operators were either bracing for the online tsunami or proactively embracing it in order to ride the wave. Flight prices were never this low relative to incomes, fueled not only by cheap crude oil but also by demand over the internet which was ensuring maximum capacity utilisation and the economies of scale. New flight destinations were being added by the day and low-cost carriers were popping up in many micro-markets, especially South East Asia and India, after their expansion in Europe.
The smart phone revolution and cheap data was the answer to the ‘information at your fingertips’ demand. Travel related online searches skyrocketed, the traveller’s advice on sites such as TripAdvisor was all over the net, flight search engines were being used as never before and the ‘bucket list’ concept became synonymous with travel. Besides, the ease of using credit cards, USD & Euro as widely accepted currencies, more open borders and visas on arrival helped travel immensely. This is when the digitally savvy, deal searcher, airline mile collector and ‘travel hacker’ came to the forefront – the so-called backpacker packed with information. Many such travellers wanted to pass on the tips and tricks of the trade or just wanted to become popular, and thus came the travel blogger and the vlogger (for travel video content). These jet setters and influencers were to be found just about anywhere in the globe and gave all their readers and viewers some serious travel goals. Facebook and Instagram platforms along with instant and infinite digital camera photographs just added fuel to the desire to share. Even two major world events (9/11 and Covid-19) could not douse the fire of travel and storytelling that is so elemental to our being human.
In this movement mania, we all became travellers and it didn’t really matter if we preferred being called a traveller or a tourist, but we certainly were not explorers any longer, as that title belonged to those who were either venturing into space, going underwater or were digging into our past (archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, etc.) or finding scientific solutions for the future (in areas of conservation, sustainable transport, medicines, food production, etc.). This was a crucial divergence of the 20th century just going by the multitudes criss-crossing the face of the planet as never before, all supported by the tourism industry. It must also be said that while most of this travel has been voluntary and for pleasure, the forced migrant movement has been at its highest ever in history, too, with people leaving their homelands due to conflict, genocide, or to seek a better life.
Diving a bit deeper into the various branded types of travel during the present 21st century , many names got thrown about such as independent travel, budget or luxury travel, dark tourism, sustainable & conservation travel, nature & wildlife tourism, adventure travel, beach destination tourism, business travel, food tourism, backpacking, nomadic travel, voluntourism, amongst others. Of course, all these are terms being popularised by marketing agencies and business houses. There is even something called ‘competitive travel’ or travel as a sport, where country or destination collectors count and keep records of their travels to see who the ‘most travelled’ person is (I am guilty of this too, naturally, going by the ‘Most Travelled Indian’ name). There are official clubs for such kind of record keeping with The Traveller’s Century Club, Most Travelled Person and Nomad Mania being the three most popular and recognised ones globally. Some of the most travelled people worldwide from these clubs have been Charles Veley, Harry Mitsidis, Babis Bizas, Joao Paulo-Peixoto, and Donald Parrish amongst others.
We are also in a time when space tourism is coming of age and it’s actually a real thing. While Yuri Gagarin’s space flight in 1961 and NASA’s Apollo 11 mission to land man on the Moon in 1969 were for astronauts and explorers like Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, now we have Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin already rocketing normal (but very wealthy) humans for a few minutes of space experience. Virgin Galactic takes passengers to 85 kilometres above sea level and Blue Origin to 100 plus kilometres from where we can see the curvature of Earth and the blackness of space. For comparison, your airplanes go to a height of 12-14 kilometres only. I didn’t mention Elon Musk’s SpaceX first since its purpose is much larger than that of a space tourism company, which is to land a man on Mars and later to colonise the red planet. But SpaceX also offers multi-million dollar space travel to the ISS or International Space Station that orbits our planet at a height of 400 kilometres. Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are a lot more ‘affordable’ with a 0.45 million and 1.0 million US dollars per person price tag respectively (1 million USD = 8.4 crore INR approximately).
Looking back, we humans have recorded this greatest of all journeys from then to now in rock art, in clay tablets, ancient scriptures, and then in books & paper using the modern printing press, on television & in cinema, on websites, blogs & social media. And while the medium has changed over time, what has not is man’s unstoppable desire for knowledge, curiosity, risk taking, to seek what lies beyond and to share this new knowledge. While, in ancient times, travel was due to the necessity of finding shelter & food, and then later to trade, conquer or to spread faith, there was always an undercurrent to all these causes for movement, and that was the undercurrent of curiosity which remains to this day. The need to explore is in our DNA and is an integral part of the human story, from the restless ape to the man in space. So, when you travel next, know that it’s the same urge that drives you as did our common ancestors. This is truly the golden age of travel and I would not trade this time of relative peace and prosperity for any other in history.
(Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home.)
