[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] Amazing Race 15, Ep. 7: Do you have to be strong to travel?

[Edward Hasbrouck]

Do you need to be big, strong, and physically fit to travel around the 
world?

Scroll down, or read online with links:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001773.html

=====

See my blog for other news this week:

Consumer groups join me in call for action on travel privacy:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001770.html

Travellers short-changed in currency conversion fee decision:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001766.html

Chase joins "Hall of Shame" for credit card terms and conditions:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001772.html

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The Amazing Race 15, Episode 7

Zoutkamp (Netherlands) - Amsterdam (Netherlands) - Stockholm (Sweden) - 
Häggvik (Sweden)

Do you need to be big, strong, and physically fit to travel around the 
world?

The short answer is, "No". But it does raise some issues, as we saw this 
week on "The Amazing Race" when the contestants faced a reprise of a 
challenge from a previous season: finding "a needle in a haystack" or, 
more precisely, one of the handkerchief-sized flags in a field of round 
bales of hay that had to be broken open, unrolled, and picked through to 
find the clue flags hidden in just a few of the bales.

Round hay bales are five feet high and weigh a thousand pounds or so each, 
so even unrolling them is an arduous task. Luck had a lot to do with it, 
but it's no surprise that the two professional athletes in the race (two 
members of the Harlem Globetrotters), by far the biggest and presumably 
the most fit of the racers, with a particular advantage in leverage from 
their height, finished first.

When "The Amazing Race 6" came to Häggvik, the racers appeared to be 
suffering from severe sleep deprivation. This time, it was more an issue 
of tired muscles, as the last challenge before the hayfield involved 
filling and stacking sandbags -- an arduous task, as you know if if you've 
ever had to do it -- to protect themselves against a dynamite blast in a 
quarry. Apparently the only thing the show's scriptwriters knew about 
Sweden was that the Nobel Prizes were founded by the inventor of dynamite. 
(Yes, I've filled sandbags. No, it had nothing to do with dynamite or 
blowing things up.)

Real travellers, of course, are unlikely to have to do any of these things 
-- which leaves two questions: How strong and fit do you have to be to 
travel around the world? And what are the most challenging real-world 
physical tasks that travellers need to be prepared for?

1. How strong do you have to be to travel around the world?

Not very. Brute strength is rarely needed for travel. We may think of the 
Third World as the land of "hard travelling", but the places where the 
physical infrastructure of travel is worse tend to be those where the 
service infrastructure of people to help you (carrying your luggage, for 
example, where the path is unpaved and there is no motorized transport 
available) is better and cheaper.

Lots of people with limited physical ability -- small, frail, sedentary, 
old, young, out of shape, etc. -- travel around the world every year, many 
of them on their own. Even for people with more extreme physical 
disabilities, more is possible than you might imagine, if you are willing 
to put up with having to pay people to help you over the rough places in 
the road rather than being able to get by on your own with more 
technically sophisticated aids to personal mobility. John Hockenberry's 
memoir of life as a globetrotting NPR war correspondent in a wheelchair, 
"Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of 
Independence", provides some thought-provoking examples.

There are places where travel is genuinely and unavoidably hard work, 
mainly because of the rigors of long-distance ground transport in roadless 
areas, and/or a lack of accommodations at any price that satisfy First 
World standards of minimal comfort. But those are almost all either in 
parts of the Fourth World where there are few tourists, not even many 
healthy young backpackers, or involve particular types of travel like 
trekking that are inherently physical anywhere in the world. There are 
lifetimes of other parts of the world to explore.

If you're going to compete in a race, it's common sense to train for it, 
and train hard. If you live a sedentary life, particularly if you drive 
everywhere, it makes sense to get in as good shape as possible for walking 
before you set out on an extended journey on which you won't always have a 
car. In general, however, physical and mental stamina is more likely to 
determine the limits of where you can comfortably travel than the maximum 
weight you can lift or how fast you can sprint.

2. What are the real-world physical challenges that travellers should be 
prepared for?

*Walk:* Even very leisurely sightseeing on foot and by public transit is 
likely to involve at least five miles a day of walking. You don't have to 
spend all day, every day ,sightseeing. The more slowly you travel, and the 
more time you spend in each place, the less likely you are to come up 
against your physical limits trying to see too much in too little time. 
But if you plan a busy travel agenda, be sure you're in good shape for the 
amount of pavement pounding it will require.

*Lift:* Unless you're on an escorted tour with baggage handlers 
everywhere, it can be difficult if you can't lift your luggage up a high 
step onto a bus, truck, or streetcar, or into a luggage rack above your 
head. There will usually be someone nearby willing to help, but 
occasionally there won't be, or there won't be anyone you are prepared to 
trust with your luggage at first glance.

*Climb:* The kinds of infrastructure adaptations we've gotten used to in 
the USA since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act -- in 
particular, elevators and ramps in public facilities -- are not (yet) the 
norm even in the rest of the First World. Often there's only one elevator, 
escalator, or funicular. If it's out of service, the alternative is to 
take the stairs. Museums, in my experience, are generally pretty good 
about providing for visitors with limited strength and/or mobility. But 
it's routine to have to go up or down a couple of flights of stairs to get 
on or off a bus, train, or subway. In some steep towns and cities streets 
and footpaths become flights of public steps. (Complicating matters, some 
of the steepest cities are also those at the highest altitudes.) Hotels 
with elevators can be scarce or nonexistent, depending on where you are. 
It's reasonable to expect, and to negotiate, a lower price for a room that 
requires climbing more than two flights of steps. But you should expect to 
have to climb up and down at least a couple of flights of steps several 
times a day. For many travellers with limited strength, the most difficult 
thing they routinely have to do is to get their wheeled luggage up or down 
stairs at entrances and exits from train, bus, and subway stations.

*Carry or drag:* If you can't carry or wheel your own bag(s), you can 
usually take a taxi or rickshaw, or pay someone to carry your luggage to 
and from the place you are staying. Most of the time, wheeled luggage will 
ease the way. If you've arranged your schedule (or lack of a schedule) so 
that you don't need to be in a hurry, you can go slowly and stop and rest 
as often as you like, maybe even sit on your wheeled luggage to rest if 
it's sturdy enough. But if distances are short enough for almost everyone 
to walk -- in a small but touristic town, for example -- and/or if none of 
the porters seem trustworthy, there will be occasional times when you have 
to make your way to your hotel or hostel, with your luggage, on your own. 
If the distance is much more than a mile, and there's lots of traffic, 
there's probably some sort of motorized transport available. But the 
places where there is no motorized transport are likely to be those where 
the roads or paths are unpaved. Half a dozen times in my last year-long 
trip around the world, I had to cover more than half a mile of rough stone 
paving blocks, rounded cobblestones, or coarse gravel -- the worst 
possible surfaces for wheeled luggage. If you aren't prepared at least 
occasionally either to put your pack on your back and carry it if it has 
straps, or to drag it over such a surface, that will put some significant 
limits on where you can go.

*Stand:* You won't always find a convenient seat if you get tired and need 
to rest. Even if you'd be willing to sit on the floor or the sidewalk in a 
pinch at home, you probably won't feel like doing that in places where 
there are no sidewalks and the streets are covered with animal (and 
perhaps human) excrement. You might have an unexpectedly long wait for a 
bus on a street corner, or you might board a crowded bus, not find a seat, 
and get stuck in a traffic jam for an hour or two. If you look ill or 
faint, people are likely to give up any available seat for you. People in 
most of the rest of the world are considerably more deferential to 
elderly, pregnant, or disabled people, in such situations, than is the 
norm in the USA. But travelling on your own can be difficult if you can't 
stay on your feet for couple of hours at a time.

*Endure:* Especially in transit -- on vehicles of all sorts, or while 
waiting for transport -- you can find yourself in physically uncomfortable 
circumstances for hours at a time. How long are you prepared to wait 
around the bus yard for a vehicle to fill up with passengers before it 
leaves? For how long can you tolerate a cramped seat on a bouncing bus on 
an unpaved road, with other passengers pressing against you on all sides, 
perhaps with too much smoke and too little ventilation, or perhaps with a 
frigid draft? Many buses in other countries are more comfortable than 
Greyhound, but sometimes the conditions turn out to be worse and the 
journey longer than you expected. You can usually (not always) carry some 
snacks with you, but keeping to a regular meal schedule is sometimes 
impossible. When you're judging whether the ride will be bearable, be 
realistic about your tolerance for sustained discomfort and your 
confidence (or lack thereof) in what the trip will be like and how long it 
will take. Consider both your physical and mental stamina. After how long 
a journey, at the end of the road, in a strange place (perhaps in the 
middle of the night if you are delayed, even if you were scheduled to 
arrive in the daytime), will you be too tired or feeling too debilitated 
to find your way to a place to stay, managing simultaneously to stay 
sufficiently open to the experience and not to take your tiredness and 
discomfort out on your travelling companion(s) or the people you meet, yet 
sufficiently alert and wary not to set yourself up to get ripped off by 
pickpockets, muggers, or con artists?

*Listen to your body:* Most people who overexert themselves while 
travelling do so not because it was necessary to get where they wanted to 
go, do what they wanted to do, or see what they wanted to see, but because 
they were too distracted by the sensory overload of being in a strange 
place -- whose sensations, after all, they had come for the purpose of 
experiencing -- to remember to pay attention to the pain, tiredness, or 
other sensations of their own body signalling that it's time to rest. 
Before you put yourself in such a deliberately and profoundly distracted 
state, practice paying attention to your body's early warning signs. The 
excitement of travel is a powerful drug that, like adrenaline, can keep us 
from noticing our pain, tiredness, hunger, or thirst until it's too late 
for a quick recovery. On the road, remind yourself to stop periodically 
and ask yourself, "Do I need to slow down? Do I need to stop and rest for 
a bit? Drink? Eat? Sleep?"

There are things I didn't do on my last trip around the world, in my late 
40's, that I might have done had I gone to those places on my first such 
trip in my 
20's. But there are also things I noticed and learned on my last trip, 
seeing 
things with more experienced eyes, that I might not have appreciated if i 
had seen them earlier in my life. Travel while you are younger and more 
fit, if you can, but travel when you are older, too, even if you are less 
fit.

Bon voyage!

Edward Hasbrouck


----------------
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214

"The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World" (4th ed. 2007)
"The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace"
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