On Otherness and Travel

From How to Travel by The School of Life:What we can feel at such moments is a basic pleasure at encountering ‘otherness’: practices, customs, habits and vocabularies that are strikingly at odds with those we know from home and which give us a welcome reminder of the sheer diversity and complexity of the world. From a settled vantage point, it’s only too easy to picture humanity as homogeneous and, therefore, a little dull and prescriptive. But this isn’t a view which can survive the first few hours in a new country. We’re quickly reminded that, for all the talk of globalisation, places retain a fascinating, welcome distinctiveness. The smells, the sounds, the bread, the light at dawn, people’s shoes, the way of making tea, the arrangements of the taps and sockets, the light at 5pm… everything is satisfyingly ‘other’. This can become an invitation to explore alternative ways of living and thinking. There may be many more routes to being happy than the ones we’ve explored to date.…