Reading and exercising are the most time-spending preparations among all. I almost touch books and shoes everyday.
For safely arriving Lhasa and freely hanging out around, this year I mainly take cardiopulmonary function improving exercises and continuously increase stamina. I went to Hsueh-shan main peak for testing and the result was good. Weight carrying...well, I would have lots of chances to practice on this trip since I have a big backpack. No exercises would work if you don't do it continuously and gradually increase the training quantity, so I have to prepare more time for training. It would be just wasting time if I got hurt out of hurry and have to rest. A good shaping body is something necessary no matter what kinds of trip you are making. If you haven't exercised for a while, start training yourself right when you decide to make a long journey. Make yourself to some degrees, not having to be very strong but feasible to go to wherever you want.
Exercising makes people feel better and better, while reading makes them more and more ignorant. One book leads me to another ten, thus I get more and more books to read. Although It's never-ending, I strongly suggest travelers to read something before starting the trips, to know a bit about that place, about its living style, culture, tourist spots, politics, ecology, legends, people, religions... . Read whatever you are interested in, and whatever you want to read. Don't waste time on those non sense.
Books are free information sources and easy to get. If you are not so fond of reading texts, you might try more attractive ways like photography portfolios, magazines, TV and movies to know more about where you are going to. If you don't really want to know more about that place, at least please put respect on it and the people living there. If, unfortunately, you don't want to know that place neither like putting respect on it, then you make yourself one of those pathetic tourists. I wonder, for those people, what the difference would be between visiting Shandong and visiting Taitung.
I always name moving independently from one place to another as "traveling", while doing sightseeing things as "tour". "Traveling" came from a Latin word "tripalium", which was a torturing tool with 3 long rods in ancient age. It functioned as binding human on it and burning him to death, which might have something related with the beginning of traveling. Since ancient Greek and Rome age, for a very long period of time, travelers had to climb over mountains and cross rivers barely on foot. They needed to fight against hunger, deadly heat and coldness, bugs, diseases and villains in order to reach another country, to accomplish missions that they had no idea if worthy or not. Stepping on a journey meant endless torture and suffering.
(source: http://geklodia.files.wordpress.com/)
"Tour" and "turn" came from a Greek word "tornos", which refers to a historical tool that we call "lathe" nowadays. Workers put materials into the axle and make it turn repeatedly, then carve or cut the materials with cutter or awl and perform effects like polish and shaping. The difference of source vocabulary seems to indicate the difference between "traveling" and "tour"; tours are always repeating something, easy to duplicate, generate the same stuffs no matter what you input. Tourists don't have to care much and are able to receive scenery, food, history and culture of that place. Traveling, especially self-independent traveling, tiring consume your energy to find accommodations, catch buses, save expenses and even understand yourself to know where you might be going to.
People have different ways of traveling, or touring as well. Not everyone is willing or capable to spend time on preparations of coming trips. But at least, please don't interrupt or invade other people's home town, don't be arrogant just because having some money with you.
I have no problems with tour trips, though I do hate some behaviors of some kinds of tourists. Traveling and tour are 2 ways of visiting a place, depending on how much time and resources you have beforehand and maybe your partners. Being a traveler or a tourist is a matter of your attitude, whether understand and respect or not. We could see the world with traveler's eyes when we are in a tour group.
"Traveling thousands of miles is better than reading thousands of books" must came from someone who liked traveling. People who like reading might got moody when it became classical. For me, reading and traveling are 2 different experience and they are beyond comparable. Via reading and traveling, people are searching for some answers, and generate more questions during this process. Maybe, what really interests me is the process of never-ending searching and questioning, not those answers that we might call them the truth.
2010/01/14 Kaohsiung.
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