Dan Kieran's guidebook for slow travellers made me experience again the dizziness I used to feel before my Interrail trips when I was young. If I were to face the unpredictable again, I would be forced to wake up to life and go through the situations minute by minute without knowing the outcome. The main idea of the guidebook is crystallized in the quotation of Laotse: ” A good traveller does not have a fixed plan and he/she is not trying to get there.” Kieran deals with the difference between, on the one hand, planned, systematical tourism, and on the other hand, travelling in the moment, seizing unexpected opportunities.
And of course, holiday trips have become sheer industry at their worst, just performances. If you do the expected things during your trip and visit the places according a plan, you are promised a relaxed mind and freedom from everyday life as a reward. The holidaymaker, who then gets exhausted under the pressures during the trip, also feels disappointed with herself/himself.
Slow travelling, instead, accepts all emotions connected to the trip and its hardships. Little by little, flinging oneself into the stream of a journey may help one to experience deeper awareness and truly absorb deep knowledge of realities different to ours.
Travelling is easily restricted by the lack of money or time. In this case, Kieran encourages us to make small hiking tours in the immediate area. The use of maps – the pros and cons – is also dealt with. At the end of the book, after an abundance of literary references, illuminating examples and amusing stories, Kieran expresses his gratitude for his idea of slow travelling to his fear of flying. This idea could be used even in a wider sense: how to make use of one's fears in personal growth; how to harness one's demons as diligent draught animals for the whole journey of life.
Dan Kieran. The Idle Traveller. The Art Of Slow Travel. 2012
Photo by Niilo Isotalo
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