Why Travel: Baby Boomers make up the most traveled generation in history. We started young in the back of the woody station wagon sustained by Pop Tarts, orange Tang, transistor radios and comic books. Many of our peers backpacked on $5 a day through Europe or followed the Hippy Trail in Asia after high school or college. We earned tens of thousands of air miles on business trips and often used these bonus travel vouchers to fly our families across oceans on vacations.

Our travel habits aren’t likely to change as we enter into the life stage where career and children no longer take up all of our time and money. People in their fifties and sixties continue looking for opportunities to keep active – physically and mentally. For many, that means taking trips that offer new knowledge and experiences, allowing us to rediscover old interests, latent talents and the chance to make a difference in the world in ways that are new to us.

People travel for different reasons. If you go somewhere because of a need for meaningful experiences, you need to know your motivations and develop missions for travel that are specific to your desires.
Before you jump at any travel opportunity, stop and think about your own reasons for making such a voyage. You’ll get a lot more out of your journeys if you are clear on why you want to travel and what you expect to get out of it. Once you know this, it’s easier to take advantage of the opportunities that are right for you. Like most people, you have limits on your time and money, so you’ll want to evaluate any travel prospect before investing your hard-earned resources.

Here’s a recap of the steps to take to make sure you will travel in 2010:
1. Make a New Year’s Resolution to travel in 2010.
2. Answer the Who, What, Where, When, Why & How questions.
3. Think of issues that make planning difficult & organize by importance or degree of difficulty.
4. Consider ‘Where’ sub-questions to research destinations, issues and strategies.
5. Figure out the ‘What’ questions and answer.
6. Ask ‘Who’ to travel with, learn from, get local knowledge, and/or trust when traveling.
7. ‘When’ to travel: make a plan to take advantage of every opportunity to travel.
8. Know ‘Why’ you travel to ensure you get the most out of the experience as well as to evaluate opportunities to try something new and different

The next blog postings will continue with each of the 5W & 1H questions to dig deeper into the issues and how you might begin to address them.

Photos: You need to have a clear idea of ‘Why’ you travel and what you want out of the experience (click on the thumbnail for a full image – a new page will open):

WHAT’S NEXT: We’re in mainland China, in our new home in Wenzhou. We’ll be living here for at least a year while husband Jacob teaches English and I write my travel book.

NOTE: My “This Expat Life” blog will return in the next week.

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