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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Our Athenian friend was correct.

Before I started to travel, I thought I had a handle on the world, but I only really knew mine because I'd never experienced anywhere else unless I'd seen it on TV, and that only gives you what the cameraman want you to see.

Travelling should always be done alone as a partner has to be considered, restricting your freedom to wander at will.
I've tried both, and there is no way I'd go with a travel mate ever again.

I would see a bus with an interesting town name on the front, so I'd just get on, regardless of the fact I had no little where I was going.
It works, and you'll have interesting times, but you can't do that if you have to debate it with a partner.

The greatest things you learn are not about the places you've visited, but about your own country and your own attitudes.

I go along with both of the above posts.

Travel has broadened my horizons and also given me an appreciation of home.

Different for me.
Travel opened my eyes to a million things, but it made me realise what a dump home was.
Change in society is generally slow, so 'the norm' is what's around you as you grow up.
When you see how other people live, it makes you reflect on your way of life and the things that surround you.
My home area is infested with drug dealers and all the crime and misery they bring with them, so seeing an almost drug free country shocked the hell out of me.
I simply didn't realise how bad things were because I'd never seen what it was like to live in a place free of such people.
Travel has totally changed my life, and I don't believe I'll ever return to the UK.

Fred wrote:

The greatest things you learn are not about the places you've visited, but about your own country and your own attitudes.

Great thinking. I would change the wording slightly to:
"The best thing you learn when travelling abroad is not about faraway places and exotic people, but about yourself!"

^
I can live with that.

Sorry, but I don't agree with Fred. Travelling alone suited him, but it didn't suit me - because my circumstances were different. Travelling alone in a car, in my adventurous youth, I used to pick up people from Youth Hostels to share expenses, and found it nice to be able to chat with them about the things we saw. Most times, I never met them again after we'd gotten to wherever it was we were going. Once, tho0ugh, the companionship became something more long-lasting. The link below tells that story.


A contrasting story was posted in October this year, on my blog, called "Sometimes, you have to turn back" - which I won't link to because that might be too much of a good thing. The fellow I was travelling with in Yugoslavia (his name was Paul, from South Africa) wanted to stay over in Skopje and help fix up after the earthquake; I didn't want to - and drove on in the expectation of finding someone else to travel with. Which I did, as the Zorba post reports. I absolutely would not have backpacked my way through the Middle East by myself!

Horses for courses.

Some prefer company, but I prefer casual relationships, parting as we reach the next fork in the road.
I loved the freedom to do what I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it, all without the slightest worry about a travel companion.

For me, travel was about exploring, but also about freedom.

Fred wrote:

I loved the freedom to do what I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it, all without the slightest worry about a travel companion.

That's about the best argument there is against marriage, Fred. Right?

Gordon Barlow wrote:

Fred wrote:

I loved the freedom to do what I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it, all without the slightest worry about a travel companion.

That's about the best argument there is against marriage, Fred. Right?

Yer, baby.

I managed to put off falling in love until I was 45, but I sometimes wonder if 65 would have been a better bet.
I fell in lust several times, but you can just walk out of that sort of relationship.... and I did ... often.

My wild biker days are done, all I have a mini bus family car now,
My wandering around is over, even having trouble finding time to take photos.
The worst thing? I have to be sensible, and I hate it.

It's a bugger all right, Fred! All you can do now is wait for the grandchildren, if you don't have any already. They're great - lovely and loving, but no responsibility of the grandparents. We shouldn't even be on a thread like this, at our stage of life. The Old Codgers thread is all we're fit for now.

Am actually on the same page with Fred about exploring new "worlds".In addition to this I see it more of adding experiences of how to tackle different people from different backgrounds.Also it might encourage a sense of responsibility and you you get to be yourself.

Gordon Barlow wrote:

It's a bugger all right, Fred! All you can do now is wait for the grandchildren, if you don't have any already. They're great - lovely and loving, but no responsibility of the grandparents. We shouldn't even be on a thread like this, at our stage of life. The Old Codgers thread is all we're fit for now.

I'm only aware of two children, but the eldest is just short of eight, so not grandchildren I'm ever likely to see before I croak.
There may be more kids, maybe even grandkids, around somewhere, but I have no real clue either way.

My adventure these days is limited to my little walks around bits of Indonesia.

jkkiragu wrote:

Also it might encourage a sense of responsibility and you you get to be yourself.

I was brought up to 'mind my manners' and be all responsible and sensible, but that didn't last because it was way too boring.

I remained polite (I'm English, live with it), but about as wild as you get, doing as many things I should regret as I could, and totally failing to regret any of them, especially the stuff involving doing mad things on motorbikes.
Travel only served to allow me to do even more things I should regret, installing absolutely no sense of anything except fun, especially responsibility.
Saw a bus, got on it because a place name looked interesting, did naughty things with local ladies I met on the way, without the slightest interest in any responsibility for anything I caused and not so much as an SMS to any after I'd left their bedroom.
10 commandments - only one left (adultery is the most fun).
I got to be myself, but no sign of any responsibility.
I'm not myself any more and I have responsibility, but there's still a devil on my shoulder whispering naughty ideas into my ear.

Edith Piaf sounds a lot like a cat choking on an especially big fur ball, but she shares one things with me - Je Ne Regrette Rien, or at least all the bad stuff I enjoyed.

Ah well, the French loved her, Fred - as do I! This (below) from what I think was her last concert. There's an English translation somewhere on YouTube, I think.

I'll give the link a miss, but thanks for the thought; after all, I've just had a very nice breakfast and don't want to vomit.

I will now wallow in self pity at the probable end of my adventuring days, but issue words of encouragement to anyone who is considering doing things as wild as they are stupid.

Many people will tell you you've gone mad, you're foolish, or even idiotic, but I say, tell them to go spin on this (Whilst holding up your middle finger), then pack your rucksack and do crazy stuff.

Unless you're a Buddhist, you only get one life, so to Hades with tedious - get out and enjoy it.

Short of anything else, when you're old, knackered and dribbling in some old people's home, you'll still have a serious smile on your face.
The nurses will assume you're fantasising about them (I probably will be) and/or you're totally gaga (I already am), but most will be the memories of jumping out of perfectly good aeroplanes, riding a bike over a hump back bridge at a crazy speed, and a pile of other crackpot stuff I did before I dribbled my way through the bowl of sloppy porridge the nurse with the nice arse just fed me.

I will grow old disgracefully, making sexually inappropriate remarks to nurses (Male or female - that'll keep them guessing), awaiting the greatest adventure of all - snuffing it and finding out if any of the religions had it right.
Of course, if they're all wrong, that's the end of that and I'll never know anyway, so stuff it.

I pity a dude at school called William Hague.
He has cash and all the crap that goes with a major political career, but he did sod all adventurous since Maggie stood up and ovated at him when he was 17 (So I made up a word, either call me Shakespeare or tell me my English is crap).
That dude will dribble in a very posh old folks home, but have sod all to smile about.

Dudes - Get out and adventure
(Bugger, I verbed a noun...(I just did it again) (and my use of brackets is terrible - looks like an especially difficult algebra thing)).

When your main worry is a flat battery in your wheelchair, you'll have a life to remember, not a load of rubbish paperwork you had to do for eight hours a day, 5 days a week until some other unimaginative minion gives you a gold watch and sods you off.

My old age will be like this if I have anything to do with it.

Added - adventure is what you make your life.
This will be me at his age, and to the devil with anyone who doesn't like it/

Becoming an adventurer gives you a lot more options to discover a true turning-point in your life. I smile to think of my son's, which I blogged about in a piece I titled "Turning left at Galveston" - which can be found by Googling those words. Here's a brief sample of what an adventurer's turning-point should be.
There was never a chance that he would stay in Cayman. Local success is much too easy to achieve. There are no challenges to win, only money to be made, and he is even less interested in money than I am. We both feel a compulsion to do things the hard way. 
A Scuba instructor, a submarine pilot taking tourists 800 feet down into the local trench, a mechanic on the bigger submarine… boring, boring! Bumming around Australia for a couple of years… unfulfilling. So back home in Cayman, aged 24, he hitched a ride with some American yachties to Galveston, Texas, and that was his turning point. That was the re-set button.