How travel sets you free

In many parts of India, if an unmarried Indian couple went looking for a hotel, they would encounter problems.

Many hotel-owners would flatly refuse or say they had no free rooms. However, if the traveller couple is from a foreign country, the hotel owners couldn’t care less if they were married or not.

There are a lot of people with double standards everywhere. While they see themselves as moral guardians in case the travellers are from the country, they believe foreign couples were governed by a different set of moral values and it was not their responsibility to implement that.

On the other side of the table, if the same unmarried Indian couple went to a foreign country, they would not have had problems finding a room at most places. At least, not these kind of problems.

What I’m trying to say is that when you are travelling or are far away from your familiar surroundings, there are less people judging you. And when that happens, you are free to live you life your way.

The society around us controls to great extent how we react to situations, eat, love and a hundred other things. This equation changes entirely when you are travelling.

Travel sets you free from such restrictions and lets you live a fuller and richer life.

Do you love a food that’s not available around where you live? Don’t crib! Consider going somewhere where you get it. Are you perpetually worried that you have not locked your car when you stepped into the supermarket? Consider going somewhere where no one locks anything! Yes, such places still exist on Planet Earth. Do you hate the hot summer in your home country? Spend some time at a cooler place! Do you love driving but the problem is that you do not have good roads where you live? Consider a road trip in Australia.

Travel opens up endless opportunities. It gives you whole new perspectives. It changes you, in most cases, for you own good. You stop caring about petty things at home after you are back because you have seen the world and know how to identify things that really matter.

When it comes to relationships, falling in love while travelling is essentially less complicated because the society has minimum chances of getting involved. You don’t have to explain your actions to anyone, be it your family, friends or relatives. Speaking from an Indian perspective, all the three factors have a major impact on most Indian people in relationships.

On the road, you do not have to think of too many things other than the two of you spending time together.

I have not had a break-up while travelling, but from what I understand, break-ups are also simpler on the road. A true traveller will move on, and probably keep in touch with the other person because both of them have seen the world and are wiser than the average nine-to-fiver. They will understand their time has ended and it was time to part ways and see new places and meet new people.

No education is better than practical experience and that is what you get while travelling. And it is this education that actually sets you free.