‘Travel is Not an Inherent Right’: Reflecting on the Western Privilege of Self-Discovery Overseas

By Rosie Good

Flying home after my first solo trip, I finally felt more confident in my decision to quit my job to travel. I’d taken the savings from every part-time and full-time job I’d held since I was a thirteen-year-old serving canapés at weddings for cash and made the undeniably reckless decision to blow it all on two trips: one to Central America, the other to South East Asia.

It was the first time I’d left Europe; it was my first experience of long-haul flights, travel vaccinations and visas. I was very aware that afterwards, I’d start from square one all over again. Peering out the window at the Gulf of Mexico, the sheer expanse of it excited me. It felt like my life was a video game, and finally, now I’d crossed the Atlantic, I’d uncovered a new part of the world map that had been previously greyed out.

**

Sometimes, I struggle to articulate what drives my desire for travel. I wonder if it’s an extension of the concept of ‘FOMO’, like a fear of missing out on life. It can feel like there are a set number of years to tick off a certain number of things, so I should probably start doing them. They are meant to be experiences of a lifetime, of course, not just a box-checking exercise, but sometimes it feels that way.

If you come from a Wealthy western country, have wealthy friends and you’re not well-travelled, the question is: why not? At twenty-five, I felt naïve and pathetic compared to my friends, who had already traversed South America at eighteen, studied in Australia, and backpacked South East Asia during Uni holidays.

Social media has romanticised quitting your job, buying expensive flights and living out of a backpack for upwards of six months. Instagram is crawling with travel influencers, mostly girls in their twenties who share stories and tips from their ‘budget travel’ experience, all the while benefitting from their ability to monetise the process of ‘self-discovery’.

Many wealthy, but politically liberal, people label those who are not well-travelled as ‘ignorant’ in a way that is undoubtedly classist. Living at my parents’ house, stressing about my unemployment and counting down the days until my next flight, I reminded myself how lucky I was to have the financial security to take this risk.

I imagined the reaction my mum would have gotten if, at twenty-five, she’d told her parents she was quitting her job to see the world. My grandad would probably have laughed in her face. At twenty-five, she was already my mum. Motherhood and money precluded experiences I’d falsely begun to see as an inherent right. My friends and people on the internet had enjoyed extensive travel, so I should obviously get to enjoy it, too.

I saw incredible things on my trips. Every evening, I sent my parents photos and a summary of what I’d done that day. And I felt guilty. My trips were a frivolity their parents would never have afforded them. They’d given up so much to raise me, working relentlessly through their twenties and early thirties to feed and clothe me. We’d spent my upbringing camping in North Devon, sometimes driving to France. Now they worked relentlessly so I could live in their house rent-free, and to travel places they’d only ever imagined. Surely it wasn’t fair that my life experience could be allowed to surpass their own?

**

I watch the same people who swear off animal products, promote expensive sustainable fashion and call out big banks for funding climate catastrophe take multiple long-haul flights each year without a second thought. I’m not saying that, if you’re left-wing or care about the environment, you shouldn’t travel. Just that there’s a strange disconnect. Liberals see being well-travelled as demonstrating an open-mindedness about other cultures. It seems counter-intuitive that this collecting of cultural capital involves a collective selective disregard for our carbon footprint.

Additionally, many contribute to the tourism industry seemingly without questioning it. Defending tourism, many cite economic growth and employment for locals in the visited country. But the cost of living in tourist hotspots can be high. While restaurant prices in the tourist-riddled towns I visited in Costa Rica were standard, even reasonable, by UK standards, they would be crippling for my impressive tour guide, who was being paid the equivalent of just 60 USD for a twelve-hour working day.

It can also be painful and difficult for local people when tourism is the most viable employer. On my second trip, I visited the Killing Fields near Phnom Penh, Cambodia, one site of the brutal genocide of educated Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge regime in the late seventies. Our tour guide told us how his mother had carried him, a baby in her arms, as they were forced to evacuate the city. How his father, an educated man, was a victim of the killings. Later, he revealed how painful he found talking about the Khmer Rouge day in, day out. But he didn’t have a choice – he’d stopped teaching because he didn’t have a degree, so tourism was the best career option with his English language skills.

At a Khmer Rouge prison-turned-museum, survivors stood behind makeshift booths selling signed copies of their stories. A friend asked the guide if they did it because they wanted their voices heard. The guide explained that they, too, didn’t really have a choice. With many teachers killed, educational opportunities were limited after the genocide. The best way these survivors could make money was to return, every single day, to the site of their most traumatic memories and try to sell their horrors to tourists to whom their plight is just one stop on a holiday.

**

Travel is not an inherent right. In Siem Reap, Cambodia, my main guide was a smart woman who spoke at least four languages. Through work, she’d made many Australian friends, but despite numerous applications, she kept getting denied a visa to go and visit. I thought of all the British people I knew or saw on Instagram who had obtained working-travel visas for Australia easily and jetted over there for six months or more. My tour guide had never travelled outside of mainland South East Asia, and it would be difficult for her to do so. It’s easy to forget sometimes, when we see these travellers on Instagram or compare ourselves to our friends, what a privilege it is to be able to do these things at all.

I’m not going to stop travelling. After my experiences this year, I feel more confident that my desire for adventure is more than just FOMO. I’m not just ticking things off a list. Through travelling, I can more authentically look at the bigger picture when I think and talk about the world. I hope I will be respectful in the process. And that I never, ever forget what a privilege it is to be able to travel.