As somebody who has lived outside my country and culture for 30 years I can see what the author is trying to say. But at the end of the day he is not a ‘thick’ traveler, he is still just a tourist. It is impossible to have a ‘thick’ appreciation for a culture AND be a ‘traveler’. If he lived in the ordinary burbs for 5 years, then he might start to get an inkling of the substrate of a local culture. As it is, he is just another Western expert, forming his opinions through an academic prism which, inevitably, ends up seeing the exotic as superior to the familiar.

This essay would have been much stronger, and more immediately engaging, imo, if the author had dumped the first two rambling paragraphs. The essay also contains some odd assertions: “For tourists, understanding a place is about figuring out what you need to do to ‘pass for a native’.” Really? I don’t travel much anymore but I’ve been a tourist in many places and it never occurred to me to try to pass for native.
Nonetheless, for me, the essay did say something important about trying to connect with the real culture of the host country. I write from an American perspective and I think so many Americans now suffer from culture hunger. Their own, rather patchwork, culture is in the process of being destroyed from within, like an autoimmune disease. At some level, many Americans are now envious of those countries that retain a strong sense of, and pride in, their own culture, and they want to connect with an authentic sense of belonging.
I wish the author well on his round-the-world walk. He’s not the first person to go on an extended walk to reconnect with what might be called authenticity. I hope he discovers something useful in his travels and shares it with the rest of us.

The best time to explore any European city is start just before dawn* and walk for a good two to three hours.
Free from traffic and filth you will see the almost silent city gradually awake in the ever changing light, and be ready for a full breakfast on your happy return.

(* Ideally in Spring or Summer.)

“My type of “travel experience” is far superior to yours”.

Very excited for my trip to Greece next year (especially Meteora!) – I honestly reckon too many travellers worry about ‘authentic’ tourism and forget to pursue their own interests. It’s okay to be just a tourist. You don’t need an elaborate reason to pick a country or to engage in ‘local, non-touristy’ activities.
I’m in my late 20s and I have intense interests in literature, history, art, and religion. Each to their own. So, when I wrote my itinerary for Greece, I decided to skip Santorini and fly to Crete instead. Perhaps this is unthinkable for someone who loves beaches and food. But I’m happy. I just reckon the average tourist should spend more time trying to get enjoyment / meaning out of their travels than ‘doing it right.’

When travelling in my youth, I always had a strong urge to leave the tourist areas and just walk the back streets. Maybe seeing the humdrum of other culture’s daily lives is innately more interesting than the main draw.

But most travellers’ grasp of culture is what Geertz calls a “thin description”. 

The author is being way too generous – most travellers experiences are way thinner than this. And they are arrogant – an arrogance summed up in expressions like “I’ve done Japan”

But above all he’s too generous to himself. And falls into the snobby one-up-man-ship of the holier than thou traveller. Travel just is superficial. I even wonder if reading isn’t a better way to understand cultures – good reading that is – because it attempts to genuinely understand and is based on serious study and experience.

As a student of the anthroplogy of travel, I’m writing a book on the hierarchy that structures the human community of people who move around the world for fun. Most readers will be familiar with the distinction between “holidaymaker” and “tourist”; the former buy package deals to go to a resort and occupy sun-loungers and plastic bars, whereas the latter move around a bit more and visit local markets and attractions. Above these are the “travellers”, who have a higher status than the tourists because they can talk about countries they visit, and claim special knowledge of how the people live there. They often pride themselves on physical toughness and know-how regarding the actual plane and bus-rides.
The latest chapter is on a new elite emerging from the “traveller” caste: the so-called “thick traveller”, who looks down on all the others, and has intellectual aspirations.

Indigenous peoples, having built their local customs and cultures over centuries (millenia, even) have a strength which a US anthropologist would naturally find attractive. If the US is a country founded upon building itself by welcoming all-comers into the mix, is it really surprising that as civic life almost everywhere becomes increasingly atomised through technology that it should be the first where an unravelling starts to occur?

The superficiality of much of its cultural output has increased during my lifetime; from (to take one medium) brilliantly-scripted, complex films with depth, character, humanity and wisdom to instantly-forgettable special-effects driven (i.e. inhuman) characterless drivel that i find unwatchable.

So, the author cites Chaos, capitalized no less. Humans are driven to find meaning, and the vast majority, not unnaturally, grow up into their indigenous cultural meanings. But where no substantial meaning has taken root, or been undermined by inherent contradictons, the “centre cannot hold”.

I’d argue, however, that we must seek to attain a greater understanding of what Chaos entails, in order to start to rebuild new meaning, where it has been lost. What is it, for instance, within our innermost selves that we fear, to the extent that so many fly towards and cling onto some system of belief or other, to the extent historically of seeking to harm those who don’t adhere to that particular belief system? I’m not an anthropologist, but if i were, that’s what i’d be seeking to explore rather than shying away from it. Having said that, one doesn’t need to consider oneself an Anthropologist in order to do so.

Lovely article even if Mr Arnade does come across as a bit holier than thou.
As a dedicated “thick” traveller (according to this writer’s definition) for the last 7 years the experiences that stand out are the random conversations with both fellow thick and thin travellers and more revealingly, locals along with the the quirks of local transport systems (trains, buses, ferries, ox carts).
Personally, I have no idea how you can get to proper grips with a different culture without becoming fluent in the language.
As a personal observation, there does appear to be at least one cross cultural commonality – a wish that your children have a better life than you have had (however you define “better”).

Understanding a foreign culture takes years of study and experience. No tourist to Tokyo can start to understand the recesses of the Japanese mind, and this applies anywhere. To expect tourism to give you cultural insights is like reading a postcard to understand the Vatican.

The thing about culture is that by definition it is unconscious (or inexplicit if you like) and attached to emotion.

To take a simple example: some cultures have a much stronger sense of what belongs on top, and what belongs below than we do. To the extent that using top sheets and bottom sheets interchangeably on a bed would cause them distress. Few would know why, some would try and rationalise it, but they would still feel uncomfortable.

Obviously a curious traveller or anthropologist could become aware of this – but their experience of it would be superficial, not felt. It would be knowledge from the outside.

They might even adopt the practice, but would do so consciously, not because they really felt it. This is why there is something slightly suspect about people who consciously adopt religions from outside their own culture. The fact that they have consciously chosen renders the choice questionable. It just isn’t rooted.

I loved this article. Experience the banal – great advice. That’s very profound, from my experience.

I’d suggest you can do the same in your own (nearby) city. Take the bus to suburbs where you’ve never been. You’ll be thinking about it weeks after.

In the words of a Cretan curse:

”May your children grow up to be tourists!”

Looks like you made the same error with Seoul that you made with Taipei. Although the epiphany in Taipei also sounds… thin.

This story from 10/12 years ago.
I was travelling by slow bus in Southern India (3 changes of bus) and on the last section there was no seat so I sat on my luggage at the back. I was surrounded by chatty young guys (students) who were happy to converse with an aging English ‘uncle’.
I had a long conversation with one young man who was studying literature. We talked poetry (English romantics, the modernists of the 20s). Not a talk I would have had on public transport back home.
Only when he and his group got off the bus a few stops before my destination did I see, as his friends carried him, that his legs were paralysed. I had until then not noticed and realised that it did not matter.
Travel away from oneself?

The problem for a traveller is understanding not just the local heuristics, but also the why of those heuristics and its relationship to history and to place. To give an example, if you walk – literally walk – across a border in Europe in most places an observant walker will see an abrupt cultural jump. House design changes. The church is different. Symbols and signs change. Food and farming practice are different. And this is without mentioning language. Transitions without a border are more subtle – from butter to olive oil. Or within a city where growth, wealth and immigration have left tidemarks if you look. Thin travel is like wearing cultural sunglasses that wash out the subtleties of local hues and shadows.

I thought thick travel was two weeks in majorca.

I’ve never tried to pass as a local; if you don’t speak the language fluently you’re always going to stand out. Anyway, I don’t mind being seen as a visitor, the locals are usually nice and want to engage and will sometime cheerfully tell you a lot about themselves and the town/area you are visiting. One of my habits when I visit a new country is look around the food shops or supermarkets, this gives me a good idea about, at least, the eating habits, although I’ve never yet worked out what one does with marshmallow sauce which seemed to be ubiquitous in US supermarkets.

Strange, no mention of family.

“What anthropologists seek is not that different from what most people say they want to get out of travel: an understanding of a place.”
Not particularly. I generally want sunshine, a couple of nice bars, and maybe a museum or two in case I feel like getting away from the beach.

We aren’t allowed to retain our cultures in the west. Our elites all but forbid them in the US.
Equal justice, under the rule of law. Civil rights and liberties. Common law. Private property. A belief in mainline Christianity, nuclear families, private property, and self sufficiency. Privacy. Self betterment.
These things were all at one time integral components of Anglo-American culture. Starting in about the mid to late 1960s, they declined in popularity, and are in danger of vanishing.

I understand this distinction. I travel a lot, mostly just to see the world these days, but I have lived in the UK, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and Japan. Everyday life in a country can be so different from the performances we show visitors.

‘. . . Clifford Geertz writes that a human being is imbued at birth with “the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life” but generally ends up “having lived only one”.’ Heidegger concurred (more concisely): “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.” To an anthropologist, we could any of us have been socialized successfully into any tribe. To the historian, most people who have ever lived on earth were born, and died, as their own grandfather. Only with urbanization and modernization does Heidegger’s claim become true. Just think of all the many people you chose not to become!

Mr. Arnade is an engaging writer, but I’ll stay at home, thanks. I have obligations here that preclude going around the world by any transportation mechanism.
You can learn about different ways of life by getting to know your neighbors, too, especially if you live somewhere with a large and varied immigrant population. Has Mr. Arnade walked around Eritrea? Eritreans live on my street and go to my church.

“Travellers” are wankers. I prefer being with tourists.