Many of us put travel at the top of our life lists—after the survival essentials—but why exactly do we travel? With the help of scientists, philosophers, historians and his own life experiences, author and journalist Ash Bhardwaj has discovered 12 motivations for travel, and how they can help us to travel better.
Ever since my first overseas adventure to New Zealand at the age of 17, my life has been built around travel. But it wasn’t until I was nearly 40 that I began to ask why I did it.
For some people, ‘travel’ sits alongside ‘home ownership’ and ‘family’ as one of life’s great ambitions. Brits, for example, spend more on travel than on any other leisure activity, and ‘travel’ is one of the most-listed hobbies on CVs and dating profiles.
But what do we mean by ‘travel’? Expeditions in deserts? Living abroad and learning a language? Volunteering at a charity? Or lying on a beach and drinking cocktails? I’ve done all of these, and none was superior to any other—they were just what I needed at that time.
When we think about traveling ‘better’, we tend to focus on where we travel and how we travel, but I wondered if the key to good travel was understanding why we travel. So I made it my mission to find out.
I started by asking my well-traveled friends about their motivations: Some traveled to improve a particular skill, such as writing; some to heal physical or psychological wounds; and others to discover something about the world or themselves. Then I interviewed historians, philosophers, anthropologists, and scientists about the evolutionary origins of our motivations, and the events that changed the nature and purpose of human travel. I also dug into research papers, literature, and poetry, to identify common threads and themes.
In total, I discovered 12 distinct travel motivations: Curiosity, Inspiration, Happiness, Mentorship, Serendipity, Hardship, Service, Empathy, Healing, Wonder, Eroticism, and Hope. When I reflected on my own travel history and mapped it against these motivations, I noticed that my most rewarding travel happened when my motivations and travels were aligned. Once I became aware of them, I began planning my journeys around them.
Allow your curiosity to guide you, and be willing to ask child-like questions: Why are the buildings like that; why do they make beer in this region, but not wine; why do they speak Spanish in Colombia?
I discussed what I had learned with my friends, and I realized that my research could help others improve their travel, too. So I wrote Why We Travel as a blend of memoir, travelogue, research, and advice. It reveals the origins of each motivation, how we use them to travel better, and how they can help us to live a more fulfilling life.
Here are five of the 12 motivations and suggestions on using them. I hope that they also help you to travel ‘better’.
Curiosity triggered my own love for travel when I traveled to New Zealand on a rugby tour, at the age of 17. I became curious about the prominence of New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori people, in contrast to Australia’s First Nations peoples, and it led me to ask many questions about Kiwi society and history. That made my time in New Zealand more satisfying, and I returned there as a journalist some years later, to explore that history in greater detail.
It’s tempting to believe that some people are naturally more curious than others, but our curiosity is shaped by experience rather than genetics. It’s also something that we can develop through practice.
“Curiosity is an intrinsic motivation to learn and experiment,” says evolutionary anthropologist Dr Emily Emmott, “It’s what makes our species so successful. Freedom stimulates curiosity, and children in less permissive societies become less curious.”
Allow your curiosity to guide you, and be willing to ask child-like questions: Why are the buildings like that; why do they make beer in this region, but not wine; why do they speak Spanish in Colombia? Questions help you to dig beneath the surface of a place, and the more you practise asking them, the more interesting they become.
My own curiosity drove me to answer questions around identity, culture, contemporary history and current affairs. I had begun writing blogs, and even travel journalism for newspapers, and I went in search of Mentorship to improve my writing. I travelled to Paris in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, whose writing I admired, and discovered an entire community of people who were doing the same thing.
“Travel enables what Zen philosophers call ‘beginner’s mind’,” says travel writer, essayist and adventurer Rolf Potts, who runs creative writing workshops in Paris. “An attitude of openness and eagerness in the face of new experiences. In experiencing the world as a child might—with engaged, optimistic, open-to-everything ignorance—your brain becomes optimized for a new kind of creativity.”
Motivations are not like ‘star signs’. You don’t have one that defines you, because we all travel for different or multiple reasons at different times.
So, the very act of travel can stimulate our creativity, but the place and structure of our learning also help: By running his workshops in Paris, Rolf draws on the city’s heritage, and uses it to motivate and coach his students.
“Students are inspired by each other, as much as they are inspired by the teacher or teaching process,” he tells me. “When a dozen people gather in a literary city, to dedicate themselves to writing, it creates an energy that feeds everyone.”
A more common motivator of travel is the desire to experience incredible things—like seeing the Aurora Borealis; or watching the sun rise over the Taj Mahal – which make us feel like we are in the presence of something vast and slightly magical. ‘Awe’ is the visceral emotion that we experience in these moments, and Wonder is the cognitive mindset that allows us to experience awe.
It’s easy to get into the mindset of wonder when we travel, but we can find awe in daily life by developing the mindset of wonder at home: Notice the different tree species on your street or look out for a particular color (like red) as you walk to work. Suddenly, you start to spot things that normally pass you by, and the world gets just a bit more interesting.
Some of the motivations are incredibly specific. I discovered Hope during a period of grief, when I took my mother’s ashes to New Zealand; in fact, it was her fondness for the country that sent me on that rugby tour as a 17-year-old. By traveling around the place she loved, remembering her, mourning her, and visiting spots we’d hoped to visit together, my grief transformed into hope, and I rediscovered my love of life. Like other motivations, hope isn’t one you’d specifically travel for, but it might be what you need at the time. In the depths of grief, we don’t need happiness or distraction; we need time.
Perhaps the most surprising motivation that I discovered was Eroticism, which the psychotherapist Esther Perel describes as “that sense of aliveness and surprise that comes from the distance between ‘self’ and ‘other’”. Perel was talking about romantic relationships, but, to me, that sounds like the perfect description of travel.
We find a place compelling because it’s different to home, and that novelty allows us to explore parts of our psyche that we rarely encounter at home—which might be why many people ‘find themselves’ during solo travel. But traveling with friends, family and partners can encourage us to do things that we would otherwise avoid, which helps us to grow in a different way.
The best way to bring eroticism into travel is through playfulness. Take it in turns to plan an entire day (without complaining), and you will each get the chance to do what you want to, while introducing each other to something new. You may not love it all, but it will certainly be surprising.
I examine seven other motivations in Why We Travel, each with its own flavor and outcomes, alongside the questions that will help you to explore them. Most motivations will be familiar, but others will feel strange. Some might appear in every journey you go on, while a couple will only appear once or twice in your life, but knowing them will help you to make the most of your travel, however you choose to do it.
The motivations are not like ‘star signs’. You don’t have one that defines you, because we all travel for different reasons at different times. For example, we don’t always need a ‘break’ or a ‘rest’ or ‘fun’. Sometimes we need stimulation, or purpose, or challenge or healing.
The best travel doesn’t require spending lots of money or traveling huge distances—we just need our experiences to match our motivations at that time. So, before you ask where to travel, why not ask yourself why you travel?
Why We Travel: A Journey into Human Motivation by Ash Bhardwaj is out now, published by Bedford Square.
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Ash Bhardwaj is a travel writer, adventure filmmaker, and motivational speaker. Based in London, he has filmed in mountains, jungles and deserts around the world, and is also the author of 'Why We Travel', published in 2024.
