When you think of taking a break from life, travelling is often one of your first options. That “Ah, I just need a holiday!” moment. For some of us, we already have a general idea of where we want to go. A bucket list of places we want to see or things we want to do. However,  many of us are often simply focused on making it through our everyday lives that we don’t get to think about travel at all. Then, in our downtime, you stop scrolling on an almost perfect reel of an awe-inspiring destination or hear a colleague beaming about the trip they took over the long weekend… and almost with a magical snap of a finger, your world feels a little bigger. 

All of a sudden, you want to visit that villa you saw on TikTok, go off-grid stargazing along the Lesotho border, make pasta at that Tuscan restaurant from the link your friend sent you, or hike the Otto Trail along a part of the pristine Garden Route coastline… Things you might have known about before, but never placed in your realm of existence. Now completely drawing you in. The world, books and the internet are filled with more than enough quotes about travel, with stats about the impact of tourism on the environment, reserving most of the negative ones. You could never hear enough good things about the positive effect of travel on people, and that’s just it: travelling is transformative. Travel, in every sense, makes your world bigger. 

All things considered, leisure tourism is a privilege. Many of us don’t have the luxury of seeing the places we dream of or even have the luxury to dream. Especially in a country like ours, where income inequality still heavily impacts the quality of life of millions of South Africans. Mobility and travelling for necessity, however, is an inevitable part of our lives.

Travelling to, from and for work, for family events or various personal reasons all count, and their impact, although different, still has its effect on us and our lives. Whether it’s giving us the ability to reconnect with a cousin you haven’t seen in years, meet your work targets, foster new business connections or get the medical assistance you don’t have access to at home, travelling isn’t something that many of us can’t separate from our daily lives. Especially the impact that travel has on our lives: the commute you hate, the noisy train or that long drive you have to take with heavy emotions. All still fall under this umbrella of expansiveness. Travel belongs to many of us in many different ways; every journey, even the most mundane, serves its purpose. 

So let’s explore that a bit more: the emotional and mental parts of travel. For the most part, I am at my most peaceful when travelling, but I have friends and family who are at their most stressed when travelling. Stressed mainly either because they’re homebodies or they just don’t like getting bogged down by the details when it comes to the planning bit. That’s the part that catches most of us, really. Because behind the heaping glow of anticipation and excitement of a trip you’ve been dreaming of… is a person stressing about the details! Travel, especially for leisure, needs to be just right. I mean, it’s designed to be! Nobody likes having a rainy beach day, having to scrabble for a transfer to your hotel after a 14-hour flight or — No, I’m going to stop there because just writing that list is stressing me out! But truly, travel is a complex (and sometimes big) experience for our minds and our hearts too.

For us organisers and pro-admin planners, we go into planning any trip with that in mind, so we do all the research and planning to make sure that everything goes well. I mean, learning about a destination is actually where the trip begins, and we look forward to sharing the joy of building itineraries together soon! More than anything, a well-planned trip lets you do one amazing thing, stress-free: Be spontaneous! Counter-intuitive, right? But hear me out! A well-planned itinerary sets up all the ‘must-see’ things to do so you know you aren’t missing anything important. It’s your wishlist’s best friend. Your free-time enabler. Gives you the freedom to make easy decisions, after taking time to see the highlights to do all the good stuff, like building connections with others and freely exploring as you go. This is how I’ve come to understand myself as a traveller. I plan, so I can play and enjoy getting to know a place and its people between doing the bucket-list items. I learned that this approach best helps me relieve any anxiety I might have of potentially missing any part of the places I visit and obviously, because I just really, really enjoy the process!

When it comes down to it, every traveller is different, and it’s important to consider this when it comes to understanding the impact that travel has on us. It’s super easy to romanticise tourism and make sweeping claims about how incredible and transformative it is, but none are made lightly. Here’s where the true value of travelling lies: even when things don’t go to plan or you have a less-than-great trip experience, you’re still learning new things about the world and yourself. Travelling is expensive, not because you have the best time and incredible memories you’ll share for years to come (although we hope you do!). It’s expansive because travel teaches and connects us. It reveals more of the world, people and communities to you, and secondly and most importantly, it reveals more of who you are to yourself. 

…travel teaches and connects us.

EaTravel Pillar One: Exploration

In my incredibly biased opinion, exploration is it. That’s the statement. I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring more of our beautiful South Africa, the African continent and the world. As we learn, uncover and grow, I hope you engage with eaTravel and find a home in our pursuit to explore all things niche tourism. From nature to luxe-for-less. Events tourism to hidden gems. Boutique hotels in major cities to small-town hideaways. Day trips to weekends away. If you are looking for your people, we truly hope you’ll find them with us!

Thank you for being here. It’s such a pleasure to have you with us…

Welcome to eaTravel! 

Exploring, Always,

Maz