Travel is an aspect of life: something we do, not something we buy. There is an industry of companies and people who sell services to travellers, but travel is an activity, not an industry; an experience, not a product. We may pay for transportation and for places to sleep, just as we may pay for schooling, but we can't buy experience any more than we can buy enlightenment -- even if, in the best of worlds, travel sometimes brings us both. I abhor the commodification of travel, and I write and speak about how my readers and listeners can avoid it.
Our choices are about reducing risk, not eliminating risk. We can no more avoid all risk-taking when we travel than if we stay home. Travel, like everything we do, is inherently risky, and many of the hazards of life are the same whether or not we travel.... During the AIDS pandemic, thinking and advice about risk-taking evolved from sexual abstinence to “safe sex” to “safer sex”. That conceptual framework of “harm reduction” is applicable today to travel: If we are travelling again “after the pandemic”, what can we do to practice “safer travel”, recognizing that there is no such thing (before, during, or after the COVID-19 pandemic) as “safe travel”? [More]
“Don't believe anything just because you read it on the Internet.... The Internet is the most effective medium in history for the rapid global propagation of rumor, myth, and false information.” [From The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace, 2001]
"Liberty of movement is an indispensable condition for the free development of a person." [United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 27: Freedom of movement; used as the epigraph to the 4th and 5th editions of The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World]
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