Travelling: Helps in Generating Ideas and Experiential Learning

‘The more you travel, the more learned you are’ – this old saying has proved its substance whenever tested with time and people since beginning. The travelling not only helps one to gain knowledge, generate ideas and earn experiential learning, it helps the mankind tremendously in reaching out to unexplored destinations, expanding business arena, learn cross country culture and civilizations. 

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Back Ground
What you may find difficult to learn in class rooms with the help of maps and globes, might be learnt with a travelling plan. All the travelers who travelled across the world without any modern means of travelling have helped the world to prepare various global routes, short routes connecting long distances and have helped the human being in developing its creative instinct. 

In 7th Century, Xuanzang, also known as Hiuen Tsang, a Chinese Budhist Monk, scholar and translator who travelled to India discovered the silk route which opened the trade route network which connected East Asia and Southeast Asia with South Asia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa and Southern Europe.

Another exploring traveler from Italy, Christopher Columbus, who completed 4 voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, discovered the viable sailing route to the Americas, a continent that was then unknown to the world till then. He is credited with the opening of the Americas for conquest and settlement by Europeans Vasco da Gama, a Portugese explorer was the 1st first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India in 1497 to 1499 was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans – the West and the Orient. His discovery was significant as it opened the way for an age of global imperialism for the Portuguese who established a long-lasting Colonial empire in Asia.  

Travelling: Means of Creativity
Travelling has been viewed as a source of adventure and unwinding stress of daily life, but recently it has been recognized as a means of creativity and experiential learning. In India, the number of travelers is increasing year after year. More people are travelling to domestic and even international destinations. The following figures evidently shows a similar picture-    

Number of Travelers in India

• The UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) predicts that by the year 2020, India will account for 50 million outbound tourists. Operators emphasize that currently around 25 million tourists from India travel overseas— this implies that the number would double from current levels within the next two years. Around 2009, 8 million Indians were travelling abroad.
• Sharat Dhall, the Chief operating officer (Business to customer) of Yatra.com said- “The Yatra Winter Travel Survey 2017 showed that 36 per cent of travellers were planning an International holiday. On an overall basis, it is estimated that 25 million Indians travelled overseas in 2017 and that is growing a very healthy double-digit rate and India will be one of the largest outbound travel markets in the world in the next few years.” 

Reasons for travelling
In a tourism survey, it was revealed that more than half of the Indian travelers prefer traveling for relaxation, and to relieve themselves from their busy daily schedules. A majority (50%) of people stated that they travel in search of adventure, while some (42%) reported travel to spend quality time with their friends and family. The rest of the major reasons to travel included self-exploration (41%), discovering different cultures (38%), and establishing status and prestige (38%).

How Travelling facilitates experiential learning and developing ideas

• Columbia Business School Professor, Adam Galinsky, has done a plethora of researches on the relationship between travel and creativity. Galinsky says, “Foreign experiences boosts both cognitive flexibility and depth and intergrativeness of thought, the ability to take deep connections between disparate forms. Through multicultural engagement, involvement, and adaptation, a person’s thought repertoire enhances. He further explained that a person who lives foreign and doesn’t engage with the local culture will likely receive a less amount of a creative boost than someone who travels abroad and actually involves in the local environment.
• Professor Galinksy at the Kellogg School of Management and INSEAD in his 2009 study reveals that travel induces new sounds, smells, languages, tastes, sensations and sights and all these spark different synapses in our brain, helping in creating fresh connections and rewiring your brain. The more one travels, the farther one stays from home and so the more creative one becomes.
• Travelling develops or facilitates the attitude of an experiential learner. It enhances one’s ability to develop relationships, learning local language, engage in the community, and speak mindfully about the places after one returns home.
• Travelling makes one more innovative. Innovation happens when a traveler chooses to interact with the locals of a destination. Reside with them, adopt their culture, involve in their customs and understand their ways of living.

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