Welcome to our first Craig Travel blog! It is our hope that you will join our conversations as we discuss a myriad of travel stories and share thoughts, memories and stories from our (and your) travels.

Perhaps an appropriate place to start would be to ask ourselves why we travel in the first place. Yes, some of us travel on business because we are obligated to and some travel to visit family in distant places. But what about those of us who use our precious vacation time to hop on a plane and travel to a strange place where we may have no idea what to expect or whether we will enjoy that destination. Why do we make these journeys at considerable expense and often in considerable discomfort simply to go to some strange place? Years ago, the answer might simply have been that we went to see things we couldn’t see at home. Or it may have been to taste foods we couldn’t get at home or to hear the music of a particular country. But today, we can view incredible documentaries and travel shows on TV; we have restaurants of every nationality and description right in our own towns and cities and the music of the entire planet is now as close as our own computer.

No, there must be a deeper reason why we travel. Travelling simply for the pleasure of it is hardly rational, since there are sometimes when it is not a pleasure, but rather more of a pain. But the idea of travel has never appealed to pure logic. As Henry David Thoreau put it, “It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”

Perhaps the best explanation for the urge to travel is that we are born with it. Prehistoric hunters would never have survived to propagate the breed if they had not kept ranging beyond the next hill. The Australian aborigines are famous for “going walkabout,” taking long walks into the Outback in response to some mystical whim of nature. Perhaps we modern, city folk feel we must periodically pack our bags and be off somewhere to go “walkabout” as well?

One thing for sure is that travel is an escape; an escape from our daily lives, routines, jobs, bosses, bad weather, responsibilities and reality in general. It cuts us off from the normal stresses and pressures of our daily lives. It’s an escape to an unknown fantasy-land. And yes, there can be stresses in travelling, but they are of a different kind; a late flight, misplaced luggage or a hard bed. And these are soon forgotten when we remind ourselves that a change is as good as a rest. And a change is why we left home in the first place. As Judge Thomas Haliburton greeted the vagaries of travel with typical philosophical words of comfort: “The bee, though it finds every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded with honey from his rambles, and why should not other tourists do the same?”

Tell us why you travel…..