Fellow men, travelling for leisure is not a waste of time and money

“Why don’t men travel often?” a friend asked me a couple of weeks ago. I had never really thought about it and I initially protested this notion. A back and forth ensued but the more I thought about it, the more pertinent the question seemed. I found myself asking myself and the men around me questions about the last time they travelled. The interesting part about the conversation is that it came just a few weeks after I cancelled a trip to Watamu for my birthday which is coming up in a week’s time (insert something about astrology and Leos, but more importantly, just send me money).

I’ve had the chance to do a bit of travelling over the past couple of years courtesy of my job as a communications consultant. The journey has been glorious but my friend poked at that ever so gently, asking me whether I would have proactively sought out that trip and paid for it had it not been about work, and I wasn’t sure I would have. It wasn’t necessarily about lacking the money (well, sometimes it is) but more about what I spend money on, and by extension, what men spend their money on.

I’ve always loved to travel. Top on my list of memories are the road trips my cousins and I used to take at least once every month before Covid came and ruined the fun. Asking the men around me about their most recent sojourns made me realise a few things: One, that compared to women, men are less likely to travel for leisure. Two, men don’t travel alone.
Muthuri Kinyamu (yes, that’s his real name), who runs an amazing local experiential travel company – TurnupTravel –has talked about his experience and shared industry statistics. Women make up two-thirds of all travellers who sign up with his company, and 80 percent of the time it is the women who plan and organise family travel. So, men don’t travel that much. Psychologist Lisa Marie Bobby talks about the low rate of male solo travel. She attributes it to how men relate to their partners. She says that men perform their relationship duties through activities. They are comfortable going shopping with their partners, watching a game or playing video games, but they don’t view travelling as a good way to spend money.

Maybe that’s something that needs to change. Men should initiate travel ideas more as opposed to just paying for their loved ones to go to various destinations. I think my fellow men will genuinely enjoy this, but only if we expand our view of what we consider fun. I love drinking, don’t get me wrong, and I’m definitely waiting for an endorsement by some premium gin brand somewhere, but there’s more to weekends and holidays than the next swanky bar, and there are incredible places out there to be seen. The top three destinations on my bucket list are Patagonia, Laos and Morocco. Travel has many benefits, including health gratifications, and providing an opportunity to temporarily disconnect from our daily lives.

As we have all figured out, the grandest scam in the world is adulting. When we were young and had no responsibilities, we never heeded our parents’ advice to enjoy ourselves because once we grew up the fun would be gone forever. When my mother told me this, I thought she was just lying because she didn’t want me to get excited about earning money. I finally got the job I was waiting for and quickly realised that bills really do spoil the fun. Travel is good for both your physical and mental wellbeing because it helps you decompress, something we all need to do, albeit in different ways such as  staying away from work or hanging out with friends and family.

It is also a great way to learn more about the world and the different cultures. It helps us develop empathy for people different from ourselves. We’re all intelligent to the greatest outer limit of our exposure, and that’s usually hard to understand if all we do is hang around the same places and people. It is a great way to learn more about yourself too, because being out of your comfort zone forces you to think differently and to analyse things about yourself which you would never have noticed or would never have thought about. There’s something about being away from routine that opens up introspection and thought, which I would love more men to enjoy.

No, travel isn’t a waste of money, as I’m slowly learning. It is investing in yourself, which is a concept I still struggle with to date because we, as men, are taught to make money for everyone around us but ourselves.