To Travel, To holiday or To London

This sprouts from the original idea behind GmanTV, the difficulties and constraints of meeting strangers in London, in which the creator battles his way through the straight cold faces of London's inhabitants, attempting to meet and re-meet new people through his daily routine. My view on his conquest is a simple one, which I am guessing most of you agree with, meeting new people is rewarding and is something we should all strive to do, however London makes this pretty complicated. My standard trip to work on the tube/bus/train involves being in touching distance (no I am not a Freak) of nearly 100 people, and after 7 months of doing this I have only ever spoken to a maximum of 5 people and never gone further than using 2 words. Now going from this situation to actually speaking to someone and arranging a re-meet is leaps and bounds passed my personal comfort levels.

Following on from this dilemma, comes my favourite solution... Travelling. Holidays are always good and we all appreciate a break from the office and some time to sit back and sip G&T's, in the sun or on the slopes, however there is a flaw to this perfect scenario. The average holiday usually only involves meeting strangers when in social areas ie.drunk (I speak from the experience of my friendship groups) which usually leads to short lasting, if not sexual, friendships, which disappear by the end of the night. Travelling is a bit different, most of the time you spend on the beach, in a guest house, climbing mountains or trekking through jungles is done with like minded people all looking to meet strange and new individuals. The overall comfort of the travelling scene may not be the 5* holidays that a lot of us look for, but they are usually much more active and take you to places of the world that practically do not do 5*. The challenges and differences in cultures that are experienced while travelling such as language barriers and physical activities like scaling volcanoes make your group of travelers form a more long lasting bond, with stories to be told in the far future, leading to long lasting friendships, which you do not usually pick up while holidaying.

Originally I thought this was limited to the gap year age (18-20) with my personal experience of a "round the world" trip. But more recently I did a month on the trans-Siberian railway, where I was one of the youngest, and 2 weeks in Fiji, where again the people we "played" with were more of the 25-30 range.

My view is that everyone who has not given it a go, save some dollar and book a flight to anywhere. You can see places you never believed you would go to, simply stay in a guest house and plan your visit on the fly by the word of mouth of the travellers and locals, once cannot hurt.

Disclaimer: I know that travelling is not for everyone, and I have nothing against holidays, I love them.