on travel ii
having been fortunate enough to have visited over 25 countries, i find myself recently asking what is the cost of travel? not in terms of monetary value for me, my family, and my friends, but rather for the places i travel to. economically, of course my dollar bills are affecting the local businesses. but nowadays i’m thinking the more subtle impacts that my presence has.
i wonder how people use to travel back in the day. it would not surprise me if statistically the percentage of people traveling is more in the last two decades than lets say the 70’s-80’s. particularly with the deregulation acts for airlines in the US, barriers to travel are significantly cheaper. abroad, high speed rail and lowcost airlines run rampant. as a result many more people have access to decreasingly less “remote” places. what once was a lowkey hike that only spread through word of mouth and maybe hit those travel brochures and rick steves books, now is filled with countless tourists inevitably waiting for their turn to take a picture. hopefully i’m not the only one who’s social media feed gets flooded with “how i spent a week on x island”, “top 10 tips for y country”, “what you need to know about z city”.
nowadays, it’s almost as if the instagram post is a necessity as proof of visitation. i live in nyc, and i can guarantee you 95% of tourists will visit (and post) one of the following: times square, brooklyn bridge, hudson yards, central park. i feel as if > 95% of banff photos that hit my feed are from the same angle from the same lake. arches, horseshoe bend, angle landing, they all have the same uninspiring photos. copy and paste. but did i go to 4 corners if i didn’t post an aforementioned photo? it’s an intriguing thought experiment. those places are famous for a reason. they are entire communities, like moab, that are surviving based on the tourisim. yet i can’t help but wonder about not only why i am there to begin with but also my broader impact that my presence has. one may argue that you should be comfortable with the decision to visit as long as you are visiting for the right reasons. but what constitutes as a right reason? because i want to? because i saw some blog saying it looked cool?
maybe i am a lover here. maybe i am a hater here. having visited the aforementioned, they are definitely quite magical. it keeps in context how small we as humans really are. in an ideal world everyone would get to experience these places by themselves with the best lighting. yet the realistic side reveals a different story altogether, particularly the aforementioned US public parks. often understaffed and overwhelmed, US park rangers often have responsibilities across hundreds of acres with a ratio of 1 to 100 or worse. in the case of horseshoe bend, social media trends directly lead to several deaths. what use to be little more than a photo spot off the road fifteen years ago, is not a full blown parking lot with hundreds of cars only for most tourists to crowd around a railing trying to take pictures from that perfect angle while rangers instructions fall upon deaf ears. moab is so popular now that its residents are price squeezed by property owners who can charge tourists an exorbitant on airbnb.
every time i walk past dumbo i am rather intrigued by the same phenomenon that occurs: tourists fill the particular street; car needs to go through said street; photographer fails to realize said car is approaching subject from behind; car beeps; photographer and model scurry to a side of the road; rinse and repeat every 2 minutes. of course you may say that the driver should have known better than to drive through such a street, but i would contend that nobody’s photograph in a public setting should take precedence over others. don’t get me wrong, photography is an integral part of everyone’s travel.
i’m trying to be more mindful of how, when, where, and why i take photos on trips now. i'm trying to be more aware of why i want to visit somewhere. i’m trying to be more be conscious of the bigger impact my travels make.
be good,
simple