Traveling is very essential for human progress. It is the best and the most important part of the training of youth. It is indispensable for the man of business.
The advantages of traveling in foreign countries are many. It gives us experience, it broadens our sympathies, and enlarges our outlook on life. It promotes intercourse between different nations by bringing them together; it not only proves advantageous for trade and commerce but is the best means of knitting them together in one brotherhood.
Traveling increases our knowledge of nature and men. By visiting different places, and meeting with different men we gain practical and useful knowledge which mere study of books can never give.
The Pakistani people have been isolated for a long time, and so their outlook on life is very limited and narrow. Travelling is one of our great needs. Our young men should be encouraged to visit countries of Europe and America and learn modern scientific methods of manufacture and other numerous improvements which minister to the comfort and happiness of man. Savage people do not travel much, and the cause of civilization is greatly retarded by this lazy, stay-at-home habit. A visit to the universities, seats of learning, museums, workshops, laboratories, and places of historic interest cannot fail to impress us with the elements of the greatness of other nations. Contact with more advanced people will open our eyes to the defects in our social system. We shall then try to improve our condition.
Foreign travel is of immense political value. It makes us acquainted, with their mode of life, their political theories and institutions, their social customs, and all the knowledge we can turn to practical to reform and raise our own community.
The example of Czar Peter of Russia who traveled abroad, and worked as a common laborer in order to learn the arts and manufacturers of Holland and other countries, and on his return introduced them in his own country, is a standing testimony of the benefits practical men may derive from foreign travel. His example deserves to the widely followed in our country.[the_ad id=”17141″]
In these days, the means of transport and locomotion are so many and so convenient that the individual or the nation which does not take the fullest advantage of these to enrich life, and to make it productive of the highest good of which it is capable, must be very unfortunate.
Mixing with other people will stimulate feelings of sympathy and friendliness, and help us to get rid of our individual as well as national shortcomings. It will inspire us with a higher and nobler patriotism than is possible with our narrow and one-. sided and in many respects, erroneous and exaggerated views of our country and of our people which we are likely to have by remaining shut up within our own borders. The story of the frog in the well, who measured the whole world by the circumference of the well, illustrates this point very well.
Travelling is useful for health, also. It gives pleasure. Change of environment has a beneficial effect on the mind and the body, so that traveling whether for physical enjoyment for business, or for moral and intellectual benefit, is extremely useful, and in the present state of Pakistan, a great necessity which should be satisfied in a wise: well organized, and well regulated manner.
