Travel

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Traveling is transport of people. Reasons include:

  • tourism, traveling for recreation; this may apply to the traveling itself, or the traveling may just be the necessary investment to arrive at a desired location
  • visiting friends and family
  • commuting
  • going to various work locations, including meetings
  • migration, starting to live somewhere else
  • communities of nomadic people move from place to place, rather than settling down in one location.
  • pilgrimage, traveling for religious reasons

Originates from the Middle English word, travailen (to toil), which itself comes from the French word, 'travailler' (travail). A common definition of travel is 'To go from one place to another, as on a trip; journey,' and so it is no wonder that the origins of the word seem arduous.

The most common reasons to travel have always been: migration, pilgrimage and exploration. The nature of these three has been a cause for much personal and cultural sacrifice, as in the cases of Aboriginals, pilgrims to Mecca and Captain James Cook.

It is only within these last few hundred years that we have begun to think of travel synonymously with the idea of vacation; in other words, an escape from our daily 'toil' and 'travails'.

See also