Let’s get along well. I’m not one of those who race for the ever more spectacular, hopping Mount Kilimanjaro, riding a scooter across Iraq, or sleeping hanging from straps over Salto Angel Falls. I smile kindly in the face of the snobbery of the traveler who thinks he is purer and smarter than everyone else because he has traveled in three weeks on the back of a flying beetle what everyone else does in a car in two hours. I believe that the tourist wonders of the world are known for good reasons and that we would be stupid to deprive ourselves of them just for the pleasure of marking our difference. Like almost everyone, I dreamed of seeing the Grand Canyon, the mythical rocks of Capri, or the turtles and beaches of Seychelles.
I’m a “bourgeois” travel blogger, like most of us: I’m looking for nearby winter suns, easy air connections, good value for money. I go to Guadeloupe in December and to the Verdon in June, my holidays are often those of Mr. and Mrs. Everyone. This is also why our readers read us: because like us, they don’t necessarily have a lot of time and a lot of money, and they are looking for easy-to-reproduce trips, accessible inspiration.
My blog articles on France are often more successful than those on the other side of the world, and I completely understand that. Our country is full of wonders, and I have experienced moments of extreme surprise without leaving our borders. I had real aesthetic dazzling close to my home, and I’m happy to show that you can experience an intense escape by hitting the TGV or the A7 motorway.
But sometimes we are seized by the thrill of the unheard of when we meet those who dare the incongruous. My friend Amandine Sarah Peter went to Greenland two years ago, on frozen Lake Baikal last winter, and her traveler photos dazzle me. I became allergic to the expression “outside the box”, but I believe that if there is anyone who has the right to use it, it is him.
On my modest scale, my winter 2016/2017 was for me the winter of the incredible. I was already living in Munich, and it was extremely exotic: I was able to descend into ice canyons, swim naked in the middle of the snow, become friends with humanoid goats, and carry out all kinds of unusual experiences in Bavaria in winter. But above all, I realized two childhood dreams, two slightly crazy projects that were close to my heart. In January, my trip to the Shetland Islands allowed me to attend the Viking festival Up Helly Aa, the festival of fire in the far North. At the end of February, I saw the rising of the biggest wave in the world in Nazare, Portugal: 30 meters of foaming fury that breaks on the brown cliff.
I felt an immense exaltation, an extreme joy. I hadn’t done much, but I felt like an adventurer, a pioneer of ancient times, one who goes where no one goes. It wasn’t a question of ego, of ridiculous squabbling about “who has the craziest trip”. It was this intoxication of the unknown that one experiences in experiencing things that few people around you have experienced, in being without landmarks, without milestones, without a guide (there was not even a tourist guide worthy of this name for Shetland! barely three pages in the Michelin), to discover everything for yourself.
I was not influenced by other people’s stories and images, my inspiration was first, spontaneous, and I felt free. No risk of wanting to reproduce the travels of others, no dilemma “I saw this as a great photo on Instagram and I want to do it too, do I copy or not?”.
We agree these are problems of the rich. Traveling is a privilege, a luxury, and my moods as to whether to copy my friends’ trips are derisory because of the state of the world. It’s like a spoiled little girl’s whim to say “I don’t want to go to Iceland because everyone else has done it before me”, I’m aware of that. But this is a travel blog, and this is my Travel Thoughts column, and I wanted to engage you in a dialogue about travel blog originality.
Flight comparators, or the restriction of the field of possibilities?
All travel bloggers are addicted to flight comparators, me included. Skyscanner, Easyvoyage, Expedia, Liligo… many of them facilitate our addiction to elsewhere by offering flight comparison tables for the whole Earth in a few seconds. On Skyscanner, I am fascinated by the “everywhere” function. You enter a month of the year, for example, January 2018, a departure airport, and the list of all possible destinations unfold before your amazing eyes, in order of increasing prices. I think I’m not the only travel blogger to have a somewhat compulsive relationship with flight comparators: almost every day, I do tests. “And February from Marseille, and March from Lyon, and April from Nice?” I look. I fantasize. I dream. I imagine. At first, I felt like the world was at my feet.
Today, I wonder if this is not restricting our imagination. Stamping on the starting blocks, we are waiting for the right offer, the attractive price, to go for it. But aren’t our desires for the world shrinking to the extent of hubs well served by airlines? Flight comparators and low-cost companies have domesticated our desires: close city trips, direct connections, why look for anything else? This is not a reproach, because I am the first to plead guilty (the proof), but I have lost count of the number of blog articles on a city trip to Prague, a weekend in Lisbon, in Edinburgh (I really want to go back there, by the way, I’m waiting for a cheap flight;-)), in Rome, in Budapest, in Porto, etc.
I continue to write myself, I do not intend to stop, and I read those of others with always the same pleasure. Because yes, these cities are beautiful, and we would be wrong to deprive ourselves of them. But I admit it, I laugh gently (kindly, blogger friends, don’t blame me) of our claims to originality in ultra-marked circuits. When I see yet another post with the title “Reykjavik/Barcelona/London off the beaten track”, I tell myself that we are tireless gardeners, combing the sides of the world’s tourist highways to the root.
I think of my old German friends who, like running gag puppets, ask me “and why aren’t you going to Mallorca? every time I mention looking for a new destination, because all the old Germans in Germany go to Majorca twice a year, and I wonder when we’ll get tired of it. We exploit one destination to the dregs, then we weary and move on to the next. What was new last year is no longer new this year: in 2016, I went to the Azores and Seychelles, and naively, I felt a bit of a pioneer. This year, several blogger friends went there in turn, and I’m delighted for them. But I wonder where I might try my luck this time –buy the illusion of discovery. I don’t know if our lives allow us to dare so often the unheard of.
Often, the unheard-of is expensive, not practical, is paid for by twelve stopovers and nights in airport waiting rooms, requires three weeks of successive vacations, a lot of resourcefulness, or a lot of money. I dream of Samoa and Tonga, Greenland, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Russia, Uzbekistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Vanuatu, Zanzibar, Tasmania. And then I look for flights, and I give up. Too expensive, too far, too complicated. On the other hand, this great offer for the Dominican Republic…
Difficult to resist the temptation of cheap and practical, and there is no shame in jumping on a good deal. In the heart of winter, I believe that I will have nothing to do with originality and that I will go anywhere if I find the sun. Life is short, and Punta Cana and Martinique are beautiful. But I wonder if we are not deluding ourselves as to our status as “travelers”, we who often tread the same paths, believing we are discovering the world when we are only crossing it on rails.
I sometimes tell myself that I will try to detoxify myself from flight comparators, to travel by dream and not by windfall. To try to ask me where I want to go, regardless of the opportunities that come my way. I hesitate on the type of trip I want, the kind of stories I would like to tell – to make people dream by going very far or to help them explore their surroundings by staying close. But more deeply, I wonder where I would go if I didn’t have a blog if there were no fashion, no phenomenon of influence, and conversely, no pressure of originality at all? Would I seek the unheard of or the easy? Sincerely, I do not know. I believe that blogs have profoundly changed our travel behavior and that we sometimes find it difficult to reconnect with our true desires.
Travel blogs and originality
And you? After starting to discuss on Twitter, I would be curious to have your opinion without the limit of 140 characters. Do you think originality is an important criterion? Do other bloggers’ travels influence you one way or the other – to inspire or to stand out? If a travel blogger told you about an ultra-secret and difficult to access corner, would you go, or would you say that this place belongs to him? Are you addicted to flight comparators? Do you choose by opportunity? Do you think travel blogs should stand out at all costs? Would you say that our blogs are too similar?