New Delhi / World Tourism Day 2019: Travel to broaden your perspective

With their backpacks and sneakers on, all travellers are always on a hunt for a new destination to explore. For the love for travel is like no other.

American writer Mark Twain while explaining the significance of travel in human lives had said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”

Mark’s quote tells us why we should travel whenever we get the opportunity to as it benefits us in innumerable ways.

The ones who travel frequently are affable and gregarious and the life lessons they learnt while going for trips to different locations stay with them forever. Travel enhances one’s creativity, it clears one’s head of all the stress, makes us more social and calmer in nature.

Travel has been beautifully portrayed in Bollywood movies too. Feature films like Queen and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara depict how easily a solo trip or one with friends can help gain the lost confidence and give better clarity.

The United Nation World Tourism Organization also acknowledged the importance of travelling and declared 27th September as World Tourism Day in 1980. Ever since then, the day is celebrated with a new theme every year which is in sync with the essence of tourism. From biodiversity conservation to community development, each year’s theme focuses on promoting sustainable development.

For the first time India will host World Tourism Day in its cosmopolitan capital, Delhi. The multi-cultural and multi-ethnic city is all geared up to welcome all the international delegates including UNWTO General Secretary Zurab Pololikashvili. The program will seek possible solutions as to how the tourism industry can resolve the problems being encountered in achieving the Millennium Development Goals set by the UN. This year’s theme is ‘Tourism and Jobs: a better future for all’. Besides being an interesting activity, the tourism industry is also a sector with ample opportunities for jobseekers.

One doesn’t even need any reason to travel. Scottish Novelist and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson’s quote explains it the best, “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”