Experiential Travel
Experiential Travel may be touted as one of the new trends in travel, but as a race, we have always been curious as to what lies beyond the next horizon.
Travel for enjoyment can perhaps be traced back to the 17th Century when those in Western Europe with good incomes would undertake what was known as the Grand Tour, usually through France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and perhaps through to Hungary.
They would travel to experience the culture, literature, art, music, the people and their customs. It was regarded as part of the education of a young man, and occasionally woman. Very occasionally an unaccompanied woman might travel to explore, but writers such as Mary Kingsley (no relation) are perhaps very much the exception of the times.
As transport options improved so too did the numbers travelling increase, those travelling for experiences being drawn from a far wider pool of society. The writer Patrick Leigh Fermor travelled through Eastern Europe as an 18 year old in the 1930s, with some describing his journey as the longest ever gap year.
What is Experiential Travel?
We have many reasons for travel, sometimes just to get from A to B, sometimes to relax on a holiday, or to do business, see family, and then there is the desire to see and experience another culture. Experiential travel is about immersing yourself in that other culture through engaging with its people, food, environment.
You may hear talk that the experience is more important than the destination, but I am not sure that I agree. If you want a wine tasting experience, the destination is important: do you want to drink Rioja, Bordeaux, Valpolicella, or cross to Greece and the Balkans, to the birthplace of wine, Georgia, or go round to Australia or further round to Chile, Argentine or South Africa?
Jose Joaquin Arazuni (1918- 2000) was a child care doctor in Pamplona with a passion for his home town. He wrote a series of books and built up a collection of some 7,000 photos. The books would sell out almost immediately, and in 1992, the City Council awarded him a gold medal for his work in documenting the city.
His love of his city and his determination to share that love with the inhabitants of the city seem to me to be more deserving of recognition than the American writer, Earnest Hemingway, whose novel Fiesta, subsequently published as The Sun Also Rises, so popularised the Festival of San Fermin, the running of the bulls.
