Experiencing a Destination’s Real Pulse
When our travels take us into unfamiliar territory, modern humans have a
It was my worst nightmare. The first and last time I joined a so-called “guided sightseeing tour”. I’d arrived in Los Angeles a day earlier than planned and, rather than try to navigate the sprawling metropolis on my own, I lazily coughed up a few dollars for the promise of an easy overview, a day-long bus journey that would join the dots between the most obvious attractions, ticking off Rodeo Drive, Venice Beach, Hollywood’s boulevard of stars, and a string of utterly unimpressive celebrity mansions, viewed from outside their gates. I was young and naïve and believed I’d be saving time and money and the possible embarrassment of getting lost, or – heaven forbid – missing some ostensible treasures.
Problem was, the trip was designed as a checklist of the city’s most hyped and obvious tourist hotspots, sites that all of us on that bus had already seen in brochures and TV shows. It didn’t take much to figure out that the tour’s real function was to enable suckers (like me) to leave town thinking they’d “seen and experienced LA”. Frankly, what I mostly saw was the inside of a bus and a lot of concrete highway. It gave me absolutely no insight into Los Angeles or its people, no feel for its culture or what made it tick.
Such surface-level experiences are what give tourism a bad name, reinforcing the same thinking that motivates people to visit tried and tested restaurant chains for fear of grappling with unfamiliar dishes in foreign countries. You go home with a hole in your wallet, wondering if being away from home in fact made any difference, other than a change in scenery.
If, when travelling, you never penetrate deeper than is required to take a few pictures to post on Facebook, you’re kind of missing the point.
Little wonder, then, that “social media envy”, also dubbed “the Instagram effect”, is believed to be dramatically impacting people’s travel expectations. It’s not necessarily all bad. Online boasting can have the positive effect of spurring other online fantasists to challenge themselves on their next trip. But where does this leave you? Our desire to document every moment has the effect of transforming vacations into a string of photo sessions, recording glimpses of a place you haven’t taken the trouble to actually experience.
This “photograph everything” obsession undermines the real virtue of travel, which is to open us up to a wider understanding of life. Real memories aren’t made up of fleeting successions of photographs of famous buildings and breakfast buffets. Meaningful travel memories are the result of connecting with people, gaining insight into **their** take on a place. To truly experience a new destination, you need to interact with the people who make it live and breathe on a daily basis, not only the ones who man your hotel lobby.
Every trip can be like an adventure into Wonderland, a discovery that shakes the very core of your being, startles you out of your comfort zone, and compels you to see the world in a new light. Often, it simply takes letting down your guard, and immersing yourself in the unfamiliar reality of a new place.
The first step is to stop behaving like a tourist, someone who is essentially a consumer rather than a participant in the world. There’s a marked difference between merely sightseeing and consciously engaging with a destination. This might mean seeking out guides who offer a more authentic, off-the-beaten track version of their home city, or simply making the effort to speak to local people to garner their insights into what makes their city tick. Find your way down back streets, venture to lesser-known neighbourhoods, take advice from regular people rather than those working in the tourism industry.
Yes, you need to see those monuments, museums and mountains, but what brings a town or city to life are its inhabitants. You want to engage with people who can translate the local scene into meaningful knowledge, or vitalise what you’re witnessing with personal anecdotes. People also add an emotional dimension to a place, and sharing this will help the place touch you at a deeper level.
There’s a certain beauty about spontaneous, unexpected, unforeseen encounters that aren’t happening purely for the benefit of tourists, so give yourself opportunity to allow those magical, serendipitous moments to happen.
There’s a more authentic version of your next vacation waiting to happen, and all it requires is a curious, open mind, and an open heart.
<sidebar> Ways to Transform Your Local Travel This Month
More than ever, savvy travellers are looking for transformative experiences, ones that connect them with locals, immersing them in daily life and culture in some way.
- Start by rethinking where you stay. Smaller guesthouses tend to offer greater opportunity to interact with your host than you’d find in a big hotel. Many travellers end up befriending their hosts when using alternative accommodation resources like Airbnb (www.airbnb.com) or Couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.org). Not everyone renting out their spare room to travellers wants to be your personal tour guide, but occasionally you strike gold and you’re made to feel like a visiting friend.
- Do things that you’d do back home, but in the local context. Go to local sports events and find cultural activities with a local flavour. Try restaurants and cafés in neighbourhoods that aren’t touted as “internationally renowned”, and go to markets. And if there are communal tables where you can sit and eat the food you’ve just bought, sit down and join the conversation.
- In the quaint Karoo town of Prince Albert, raconteur Ailsa Tudhope (www.storyweaver.co.za) offers walking tours with a focus on the town’s ghosts. She’s subversive enough to know that, behind the tales of poltergeists and haunted houses, what visitors really crave are intimate footnotes about the town that you’d never learn just by strolling around snapping pictures of the well-preserved architecture.
- Durban’s Street Scene Tours (www.streetscene.co.za) was started by mates Richard and Sthembiso. They couldn’t understand why its unique and diverse culture wasn’t more accessible, so they developed a string of personalised tours during which they introduce visitors to the ins and outs of the place they call home.
- In Johannesburg, Jo Buitendach at PAST Experiences (www.pastexperiences.co.za) has designed tours of the inner-city and Soweto that rely on foot and public transport. She says that’s a far better way to gain insight into how people live, and it provides a chance to actually meet people.
- In Cape Town, you can spend a few hours in the home of Zainie Misbach (www.bokaapcookingtour.co.za), learning what goes into preparing an authentic Cape Malay meal, folding samosas, and getting a grip on the legacy of spices that arrived in the Cape from the East.
- Also in Cape Town, Coffeebeans Routes (www.coffeebeansroutes.com) is a tour company focussed on introducing visitors to authentic experiences and making it possible to meet interesting locals. At night, for example, there’s a jazz safari and a reggae route where you meet and dine with musicians in their homes. And they have a dozen or so other immersive experiences where you can meet artists, fashion designers, spiritual leaders, storytellers, poets, and other dynamic locals.
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