Before I came travelling I followed a lot of travel blogs and joined a lot of Facebook groups to try and prepare myself and learn a bit about what was to come.
Recently I've seen an increasing number of posts about backpackers being 'travellers not tourists' and one in particular about how the 'travel thing' is overdone. The blogger in question referred to the increasing number of people travelling, ironically, as "the crash of travel". He talks about 'four years ago' as if he personally discovered Asia and as if 5 years ago nobody was travelling at all.

I fully understand that landing in an Asian country to find that the majority of people are fellow westerners can sometimes take a bit away from a truly authentic cultural experience, but some people aren't travelling to find that. For some people, going to a new place, discovering beautiful scenery or finding like-minded people and sharing adventures with them, is what travel is about. For others, it's heading off the beaten track, into dense jungle, barely inhabited villages and baron deserts which is the goal of travel. For most people, it's a mix of the two. Finding and exploring new and interesting cultures, but also finding new friends and making shared memories. I can go weeks without seeing another westerner but then I crave a bit of shared sense of humour or language and vice versa.

I get, too, that some 'travellers' have been on the road longer than others - at the end of the day, we're all human and all have our own individual timelines, goals and destinations. Of course no two itineraries are the same, but during my travels I have come across a fair few people who seem desperate to prove that they are away for longer or going somewhere more obscure or have done things nobody else has ever done - and most of this 'proving' isn't done in a cool, informative or inspiring way, but more of a bragging right: "I'm a better traveller than you."

People are more keen to go 'off the beaten track'
What I don't understand is: when did it become a competition? Why does it or should it matter whether someone is away for 2 weeks or 2 years? And what difference does it make if someone is a 'tourist' or a 'traveller'? Isn't the main thing to focus on that people are going somewhere? That comfort zones are being left, boundaries pushed, new cultures explored, new trails hiked and new waters swam in? Doesn't it go against all the cheesy travelspo Instagram posts like "the best stories are the ones found between the pages of a passport" if actually the story is only allowed to come from a certain place, where it was created over x amount of time and the storyteller was most certainly not a tourist?
 
Yes, more and more people are taking the time to travel now, but that's exactly what we need. In a world where people are becoming increasingly hostile towards other cultures; a world which is rife with conflict, prejudice, racism and religious distrust, now is the optimal time for more and more people to be exposed to new cultures, different religions, skin colours and ways of life. Let's please not discourage that by passing it off as 'overdone' - let's encourage it and promote it as much as we can and hopefully, through that we can achieve so much more than just a story in a passport.