THE LIGHTER SIDE Cons are clear winners when it comes to travel
I’m sure you’ve noticed the proliferation of travel information popping up everywhere post-Covid (I was going to try to avoid the C-word this week but I promise that will be the last time you see it in this piece).
It seems you can’t pick up a newspaper these days without a travel supplement falling out of it onto your floor.
You don’t have to check whether it is travel-themed or not; the fullcover illustration will be a vibrant indicator even from floor-distance.
Coconut palms, white sand, turquoise sea and a beach umbrella; a train winding through The Canadian Rockies; a gigantic cruise ship entering a fjord (Norway or Fiordland); a shot from a riverboat gliding past vineyards backed by ancient castles. They’re all dead giveaways.
Or they pop up irritatingly on your PC screen: ‘Strike North America from your bucket list’; ‘Tropical
Dream - Escape Winter’; ‘Ski-time!’
With the borders now open, this can only get worse.
Well, if I could I might indulge in some travel, but
I’m afraid that’s impossible at the moment - so I have to resort to something achievable, something virtual, something vicarious.
I have two main methods I use, and the first I call Google travel. If you can access Google Images, you’re away laughing. I have revisited many favourite destinations and explored new ones by this method.
My other option is to read (or even re-read) good travel books. I’ve read two Bryson travel works in the last two weeks (The Road to Little Dribbling and Downunder) and Dave Barry Does Japan is winking at me from the bookshelf. A Guardian report last year said that because of lockdowns (I didn’t use the word) Britons were so eager to travel by printed page that a number of publishers had to reissue some of their classic works involving far-flung, intrepid adventures. This helped them make up for the losses from plummeting sales of travel guides.
So let’s look at the pros and cons of using my armchair methods, as opposed to the real deal.
PROS
● There is no need for travel documentation. You can even travel if you have forgotten to renew your passport.
● You don’t have to keep re-telling your hip replacement story each time you go through airport security.
● You do not need to endure interminable long-haul flights with insufficient leg-room and post-meal queues at the lavatories.
● There are no seats reclined suddenly into your face.
● No child is constantly kicking the back of your seat.
● You will not need to use lightningfast reflexes to claim some armrest when your neighbour moves slightly.
● You don’t need to buy a SIM card for the country you are visiting.
● There are no tummy bugs from dodgy water.
● Your baggage cannot go missing.
● You can wear slippers.
● You can, if it’s what presses your
buttons, wear nothing at all.
● You can also visit places you wouldn’t actually want to visit in real life. Several times, flying over the lunar landscapes of some of the -istan countries, I have gazed through the plane window and wondered how people can possibly eke an existence out of such a bleak landscape. Google Images can take me there. Okay, it might confirm that I don’t want to visit in real life, but it satisfies a curiosity, saves a fare.
I’m sure you’ll agree that’s a very encouraging list of pros but, to make a balanced decision, let’s look at the cons.
CONS
● There is nothing, repeat nothing, which can replace the intensity of an authentic experience. Looks like the cons are clear winners.