In Search of the Authentic Experience
A road, a mountain, a temple. A cheap meal, a good deal, a great view. As travellers we’re always looking for someplace or something, whether shopping in a late night market in Bangkok, or or eating crepes in a restaurant off the coast of Brittany, it’s all part of the search for an authentic experience.
Too often we try to make our actual trips match the images conjured at the simple mention of a destination. Say Seville and we want to see flamenco dancing and matadors. Munich? Give Lederhosen or a Dirndl a try as we drink out of giant beer steins. Stereotypical or not, we want these experiences in part to get as close as possible to perceived life as a local, with the added bonus of bragging rights when we return home.
Fearing we’re going to miss something a guidebook told us we shouldn't, can drive us to become checklist travellers; speeding through sights and neighbourhoods without fully appreciating the sights and sounds. Naturally, we want to see the main attractions and buy one-of-a-kind souvenirs. No one’s saying go to India and skip the Taj Majal, or when in China to give the great wall a pass. It's when we visit Paris and feel we haven’t really been there because we didn’t go to that café in that part of town on that corner that there might be a problem.
It’s impossible to always be in the right place at the right time when we travel. Like it or not, we’ll end up in the wrong season somewhere for something, or on the wrong day, arriving just a little too late for any number of events. I know I was supposed to watch the sun set on Kuta beach in Bali, and the sun rise at Ankgor Wat in Cambodia, eat Kaiten-zushi in Tokyo, and paella in Madrid. I didn’t. I was too late for Oktoberfest in Munich by a week, didn’t go to a full moon party in Thailand, and made it to Seville but missed the bullfight. The list goes on and on. Bad planning? Perhaps. But But what I missed out on I made up for with happy happenstances. Lost in in Ogose, in Saitama Japan I met an elderly man who, after I asked for directions to a festival (that ended the previous week of course), took me to remote waterfalls in the mountains which I would have never seen. He then called his wife to tell her to go shopping because he was bringing a foreigner home for dinner. After a delicious Japanese home cooked meal, they appointed themselves as my Japanese grandparents whom I could visit any time I wished. On another occasion, in 'Parte Alta' the ancient part of Tarragona Spain, I accidentally stumbled onto a family-run restaurant which served huge lunches with a bottle of local wine for less than 10 euro. Some of the most rewarding experiences in my travels have been anything but planned. It's about that little place we end up having dinner because the one in the guidebook was packed, or that wrong turn we take that results in great photo opportunities. If we focus on what we actually got to see and not what we missed out on, we may realize that some of our moments spent abroad were authentic after all.