Why Travel Matters: A Guide to the Life-Changing Effects of Travel

by Craig Storti

When you travel, you have a You can be a tourist and have a nice time, or you can be a traveler and change your life. Why Travel Matters is for those who want to change their lives.

Why Travel Matters explores the profound life lessons that await anyone who wishes to learn what travel has to teach. With engaging prose, delightful wit and a distinctive style, Craig Storti infuses his own experiences traveling the world for 30-plus years with quotations, insights, reflections and commentary from famous travelers, great travel writers, historians and literary masters.

Storti's vast knowledge of the literature makes him an expert curator of astute gems from the likes of St. Augustine, Mark Twain, Somerset Maugham, D. H. Lawrence, Bruce Chatwin, Aldous Huxley and more.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Unfinished

202 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 3 out of 5]

People who love to travel wish to share their love for travel.

And thus this book. Written by the Love-to-Travel folks to share with other Love-to-Travel folks? Successfully. Written by the Love-to-Travel folks with hopes of converting the Don't-Love folks? Possibly.

I, of course, am in the L-t-T group so I nodded my head throughout the book.

What I liked most about this book:

1. You won't find a better collection of quotes about travel, I think.
2. The author offers a brilliant list of rules called How to Travel.
3. The ultimate question answered: Why does travel matter, then? You will find, the author tells us, that both differences and similarities of place and people work on us.

If you are a L-t-T sort, you will probably appreciate this book, too.

[Amory · Rating 1 out of 5]

A collection of quotes by well known travellers used weakly in an attempt to add interest to dialogue that could easily be read on thousands of “look at me” lifestyle blogs. The call to travel comes from within one and books like this serve no purpose save to fuel pipe dreams.

[Daniel Gallagher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book lays out a framework for why you should travel, how you should travel, and lays out the profound benefits of doing so. It does this from the perspective of someone who has reaped the rewards many times over, which at times gives it the feeling of a friend in a bar getting more and more excited about his favourite topic.

I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to explore any inklings they may have that travel leads to positive personal growth as a person, but has not fully fleshed these thoughts out yet. For a seasoned traveller, this book will likely not present much new to you. Though, it would be hard not to come away with an incredible arsenal of quotations from other travel writers. One such quote pretty much sums up some of the whole book’s main ideas:

“So the journey is over and I am back again where I started, richer by much experience and poorer by many exploded convictions, many perished certainties. For convictions and certainties are too often the concomitants of ignorance. Those who like to feel they are always right and who attach high importance to their opinions should stay at home. When one is travelling, convictions are mislaid as easily as spectacles; but unlike spectacles, they are not easily replaced.” - Aldous Huxley

I am someone who has travelled, but only really in the last two years. With it came difficulties, discomfort, and the realisation of my own flaws as a person. After returning, it is something I have reflected on often but could not quite fully piece together and I have found this frustrating.

Like a puzzle of a 1000 different pieces on the floor, it was difficult to make heads or tails of anything, but I did still have an overall idea of what I learned. This book was like being given the instructions for the puzzle. I might have eventually gotten there without it, but it would have taken considerably longer. For that, I have found practical use from it and enjoyed the book along the way.

[Andy Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been looking for books to add substance and purpose to the meaning of travel. I work in Global Education and this feels like a great primer for that. Yes it is western centric in it’s examples and point of view and in the coming years the voices in intercultural communication need to merge with conversations about the dismantling of colonialism, however, the push for deconstructing ethnocentrism and the how to do it is priceless and this is a great start to promote mutual understanding between cultures.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great, easy-to-read book written for those who love travel and want to know more about why we travel.
I loved the chapters on the theories about tourism versus travel and the quotes from great travel writers over the centuries about the pros and cons of travel and being a traveller.
I found the book a little repetitive in places however overall it was thought provoking, funny and interesting.

[Zen Jayne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Total scam by the title. A book lack of essence. Still here are my takeaways..
Prologue
1. Goal of travel: broaden your horizon, change perspectives,add to your personality
2. First tourism is invented by Thomas cook on 5th July 1841, Loughborough with features of speed, comfort, convenience and in group form.
3. Key difference between traveller and tourist is the comfort level, as one seeks to relax and one seeks for personal growth.

Ch1
History of travel
1. Mobility is linked to nomadism. The purpose is to hunt.
2. Sedentism forms from 5000-8000 years ago with domesticate animals and crops.
3. Stone, Bronze and Iron ages… Exodus, Odyssey.. travel is often seen as suffering as you were forced away from home.
4. In dark ages, Middle Ages…soldiers, merchants and pilgrims are the main travellers on the road.
5. Rise of the self in late 18th century..
A. Pre-modern time people see themselves as children of god and love in clans. Home is the anchor.
B. The birth of individualism (1000-1200)
1. Revive classic Greek thinking and philosophers thought(logic and reason is more important than faith)
2. Catholicism teaching is failing and we have to decide for ourselves
3. Knowledge spreading
(Travel is a mean for individual experience and growth)

The coming of travel:
1. Require good road condition, money and time
2. 16c rich people travel to Rome, turkey, Greece as part of their education

Travel and experience: make us more adaptive if we learn to be faster in recognizing new things; knowledge derives from experience; our old view will be challenged

Then the following chapters about places, people and such are very empty. Main ideas is that they are different from our home country which is obvious…

Final chapter on travel rules is a bunch of quotes from travel books.. not even organised with authors new own understanding..
But it did inspire me to refer and create my own:
1. Bring a book about the place
2. Look up taboos and learn a few basic local languages
3. Conform to local life and respect it.

[Rosita Febriyanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feeling quite lucky to find out this book as traveling reading since the title simply caught my attention. The introduction was sourceful I can say, reflecting the history of how mankind firstly did travel and came to the differences of tourist being "tourist" and traveller being "traveller". To answer the title; why travel matters, Storti associated how traveling features - people, places, and the world - impacted each other midst the journey (voyage). The readers are also given tips on how to travel by being a "serious traveller." To make sure the readers will have more consideration on how to travel and why it DOES matter to uplift and "change" their life (by improving their personal growth in traveling), Storti put many traveling quotes and reading recommendations by the experts who are prolific in this field.

[Bob Busk · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When you travel, you have a choice: You can be a tourist and have a nice time, or you can be a traveler and change your life. WHY TRAVEL MATTERS is for those who want to change their lives." Good read on why we travel, how we do it, and what it does to us. Loved the history and science behind it all. "We are inundated with advice on where to travel, but we hear little of why and how we should go."

[Maria Stallmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 stars. nothing new, only towards the very last chapter did it get mildly interesting. it could have been cut down to a third of its length. Nonetheless, some very good further reading suggestions at the back, and fun to read other travellers’ quotes.

[Marianne Markkanen · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can be a tourist or you can be a traveler book discusses many ideas for meeting the locals, how to travel to make meeting the locals more possible. Advantages of traveling solo are discussed. Overall I enjoyed the book because I love to travel and this book will make me a better traveler.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a LIT person so this was an enjoyable read for me . Storti presents some points that I hadn’t thought of in order to expand your experience.

[K Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book describes a meaningful way to travel and how to connect with people in foreign places.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eurocentric and obvious much?

[Grace Wilcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dnf

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The language is a bit stilted and sounds like a teacher's PowerPoint lecture at time, yet there is a lot to think about here and astute advice on travel.

[Thomas Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you accept the idea that travel is in effect Brain Food, then so too is this wonderful little book that wisely deconstructs travel into places and people and the third wave as experience and knowledge that becomes a mirror into ourselves and our homes. It's often said that there are only two themes in literature, that someone goes on a journey and a stranger comes to town. Well, that's the travel experience and in even simpler terms, its routes and roots and hopefully reflection. A highly recommended quick read.