Why do we travel to different places? – travel on the mind
Why do we travel to different places? It seems like a simple question to answer; perhaps one that isn’t really worth asking at all. People have always travelled, after all, and the reasons for doing so often feel obvious. Yet Ash Bhardwaj’s thoughtful book, Why We Travel: 12 Reasons We Travel and What They Reveal About Happiness, Curiosity, Healing, and the Human Spirit, suggests that the question is more layered than it first appears.
I’ve explored questions about travel before, particularly those that sit somewhere between experience and reflection. Because of this, I’ve decided to use this post as part of a broader line of thinking – let’s call it travel on the mind – to explore ideas about why we travel, and what travel reveals about how we relate to the world.
Through these pieces, I’ll aim to make thinking about travel as accessible as possible, touching on issues such as why we move between places, how different environments shape perspective, and what travel can reveal about curiosity, connection, and meaning.
To start with, let’s consider why we travel in the first place.
Some of the central ideas Bhardwaj explores include:
Curiosity, a desire to understand what lies beyond our immediate surroundings, and to see the world for ourselves
Inspiration, shaped both by places themselves and by the stories and experiences of others
Happiness, as travel is often associated with pleasure, anticipation, and a sense of engagement with life
Mentorship, where travel creates the conditions for learning, creative growth, and new ways of thinking
Healing, as a way of stepping back from grief, burnout, or emotional strain
Wonder, the feeling of awe that comes from encountering something unfamiliar, much like the heightened attention children bring to new experiences
Let’s delve into these a little deeper…
Why we travel to different places
1. Curiosity
Curiosity is often where travel begins. Long before routes were mapped or borders clearly drawn, people were already moving outward, driven by a need to see what lay beyond the edge of the known. Bhardwaj returns to this idea repeatedly: that travel is, at its core, an attempt to understand the world by stepping into it ourselves.
As children, curiosity comes naturally. Everything is new, and the urge to touch, ask, and explore feels almost instinctive. Growing older doesn’t erase this impulse so much as redirect it. Instead of learning through play, we learn through movement – by walking unfamiliar streets, navigating foreign systems, and placing ourselves in situations where we don’t yet know how things work.
Travel offers a socially acceptable way to act on this curiosity. It gives us permission to observe, to ask questions, and to admit what we don’t know. In this sense, travel becomes a continuation of an earlier habit: the desire to understand our surroundings through direct experience, rather than accepting them at a distance.
2. Inspiration
Inspiration is another force behind why we travel to different places. Sometimes it comes directly from a landscape or a city itself; just as often, it arrives second-hand, through the stories, images, and experiences of others.
Travel writing, films, and personal stories can plant ideas long before a journey takes shape. A memoir read at the right moment can turn a distant place into something emotionally charged, familiar even before we arrive.
Eat, Pray, Love, for instance, helped transform Bali into a shared point of aspiration, inspiring many travellers to follow a similar path – sometimes so closely that entire itineraries formed around it.
In this way, travel becomes a response to inspiration rather than a spontaneous decision. We go not only to see places for ourselves, but to step into narratives shaped by other people’s experiences and carried forward through our own.
3. Happiness
It’s probably not wrong to say that many people travel because it’s enjoyable. Travel is closely tied to pleasure and anticipation – the feeling of looking forward to something, and the satisfaction of doing what we like doing.
In this sense, travel fits easily into the parts of life we return to again and again, not out of obligation, but because they make us feel good. Simply put, because they’re fun.
There’s a biological explanation for this. Activities we enjoy tend to trigger the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with reward and motivation. When something feels pleasurable, we’re more likely to repeat it. Travel, with its mix of novelty, movement, and anticipation, often provides that same sense of reward.
Beyond the science, travel also offers a particular kind of engagement with life. It shifts our sense of rhythm and attention, where happiness comes not only from rest or escape, but from being actively present in what we’re doing.
4. Creativity
Bhardwaj describes mentorship as something that often emerges through travel: the people we meet, the places we learn from, and the environments that push us to think differently. Here, mentorship is less about formal instruction and more about creating the conditions in which learning and creative growth can take place.
Travel disrupts routine. With familiar cues removed, attention sharpens, and creativity emerges through exposure to different ways of living and thinking.
Travel places us in situations where observation matters. We watch how others move through the world, how problems are solved, and how meaning is made. In doing so, we absorb influences we may not notice at the time, which later surface as new ideas, connections, or forms of expression.
In this sense, travel becomes a quiet teacher – not through instruction, but through immersion, by placing us in environments that allow curiosity, reflection, and creative thought to develop on their own.
You might also like: How travel inspires creativity (even when you’re not an artist)
5. Healing
When we’re grieving, burned out, lonely, or unsure of our direction, movement offers a way to step into a different environment, creating distance from familiar pressures and patterns.
This shift doesn’t resolve things outright, but it can allow for rest and emotional recalibration. By changing our surroundings, we change the context in which we experience difficult moments, allowing healing to unfold gradually rather than forcefully.
You might also like: A guide to travel as therapy to feel better through exploration
6. Wonder
Children are easily awed by the world around them. Ordinary things feel extraordinary simply because they’re new, and attention comes naturally when everything is unfamiliar. Travel has a way of restoring that same quality of attention.
Encountering unfamiliar places, landscapes, and cultures can reintroduce a sense of wonder that everyday routines often dull. Whether it’s standing before a vast natural landscape or noticing small, unexpected details in a foreign city, travel invites us to look more closely, to slow down, and to register what’s in front of us.
This feeling of awe isn’t just about scale or spectacle. It can arise from quiet moments as much as from so-called wonders of the world. In allowing ourselves to be surprised again, travel reconnects us with a childlike openness – one that reminds us how rich the experience of simply noticing can be.
If you’re interested, I’ve written more personally about choosing a life shaped by travel.
The ideas explored in this post are informed by Ash Bhardwaj’s Why We Travel: 12 Reasons We Travel and What They Reveal About Happiness, Curiosity, Healing, and the Human Spirit.
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