Joel Henry of Latourex

Latourex, short for Laboratoire de Tourisme Experimental, is a couple of French charmers who developed their experimental travel techniques to make their trips more interesting.  Instead of just doing the same old same old — go to a place, look at its museums, drink coffee at coffeeshops, attempt to blend in while suavely writing in your journal, hit on local members of your preferred gender — they offer numerous travel experiments one can perform, in as controlled conditions as you like.

Their list of potential experiments is available here, and their list of experiments and case notes from people who have committed them can be found in the new volume from (you guessed it) Lonely Planet, if you like actual bound books.  Most of these trips can be done solo or with a partner (or a small group), so being alone is no deterrant…and it actually might improve those feckless evenings when you’re sitting in your hostel twiddling your thumbs thinking, “I sure wish I’d been here long enough to develop a social group.”

I’d never thought much about senior travel until a wrinkled yet muscled man sat down next to me on the Pokhara to Kathmandu bus. Preston had lived in Mexico, Hawaii, Nepal, Thailand and more — he’d been on the road for most of his life.

He’d relied on his wits and his skills to take him around the world. Renovating houses, fixing up boats, running a gem polishing factory, leading troops. While working to save for travel offers a great balance, an alternative route is to integrate our work and our travels as best we can. We can still always take breaks as needed…

English teaching and travel writing get a lot of attention, but what else can drive a life of travel? In the past few weeks here in India, I’ve met a textile designer, an auctioneer, a lubricants salesman, a tiger researcher, and a stock trader getting ready to move from London to Hong Kong next month.

By finding work that requires travel, we don’t have to divide our time between work and travel. Living on the road expands from experiencing, eating, and sleeping to include pursuing and achieving audacious, oft-profitable goals.

So what does this have to do with senior travel? Most of the seniors I meet on the road have done most of their travel — and are still traveling — as a direct result of the travel-based work they’d chosen to pursue. Sometimes the job sounds boring on paper. But if you listen to these seniors’ stories over a glass of whatever, it becomes clear their lives have been anything but.

Meet any exemplary seniors out there lately?

Photo by freeparking via Flickr

Women only at Exploritas

Some of you may already be familiar with Elderhostel, the hostelling and alternative travel group geared primarily towards retirees or older travelers.  Elderhostel has become Exploritas, explained as a combination of explore + veritas — meaning truth in travel.  This is a message I can get behind.

The overly slick website aside, I appreciate what Elderhostel is trying to do here: they’re rebranding as a touring company for well-read people who are interested in the behind-the-scenes at the Uffizi, rather than being designed for groups who might need walkers to get around (say what you will, but the word “elder” carries some distinct connotations).

The most intriguing part of the whole program, though, are the women’s only programs Exploritas is offering.  From a rock and roll camp for women (maybe they study Joan Jett?) in Oregon, USA to a 2-week jaunt through the Kalahari Desert in Africa, they are clearly trying to project themselves as the hip new option for older women.  I’d be interested to find out if there is a strong “older married lesbian” component to these trips, actually; so many group tours are judgemental of married same-sex couples, especially older ones, and it would be refreshing to find a company that offers comfortable options for longterm partners.

The general idea of Exploritas is a good one: group travel learning activities for older folks that don’t want to just sit around sipping margaritas all day (not that there’s anything wrong with that), that you can tailor to your needs.  I’d like to see them run a bit longer, since the “hostel” part of Elderhostel implies more of an alternative lifestyle (more of a Vagabonding lifestyle, if you will) than they seem to be pursuing.  Too bad; older folks can be offbeat, and off the beaten path, too.

This recent New York Times piece highlights old age as a never-ending adventure, but there are far more desperate, fundamental reasons why elderly people are deciding they’d rather be abroad than at home.

Here are three less-discussed motivations for senior long-term travel (the first two are illustrated below by Lawrence Osborne‘s unflinching Bangkok Days):

To escape physical isolation–

He added that what Bangkok offered to the aging human was a culture of complete physicality. It was tactile, humans pressing against each other in healing heat: the massage, the bath, the foot therapy, the handjob, you name it. The physical isolation and sterility of Western life, its physical boredom, was unimaginable.

“There’s a reason we’re so neurotic and violent and unhappy. Especially as we get on a bit, no one ever touches us.”

To erase anonymity –

Farlo seemed to deflate a little. Did he really come here on a regular basis? No one recognized him. But then only money and youth get recognized. At a certain point, complete anonymity overtakes us, and people–not just women–look right through us as if we don’t exist.

We respond with instinctive bitterness to this loss of visibility, but we also recognize the first taste of our future extinction, and we accept it. There will be no reprieve from now on. But Bangkok is a city which in this instance does, after all, offer a brief reprieve. It comes via a simple gesture, which Farlo now executed. The invisible man raises a finger, one could call it the Finger of Assent, which indicates that after long prevarication and weighing up of the available options, he has decided to become financially available for the sexual act. This single gesture suddenly makes the anonymous man highly visible, and within a few seconds he has returned to the field of play upon which his antics, his desires, his neuroses, and his dubious tastes are all once again invested with the vitality, the fraudulent importance, of his youth. He finds himself returned to life, and his detestable anonymity evaporates all around him.

To die with dignity —

George Lundquist, 70, rocks gently in a wicker swing on his 2000 sq. ft. deck in Costa Rica. He looks directly into the webcam and tells us he built this house eight years ago. “I’ve been here ever since. I will never leave.” And he means it. Although he sells real estate to ex-pats, his sincerity is evident. At the end of his 10-minute video, he bares one of the root reasons why Costa Rica is his permanent home:

“I think the quality of death here is better than what you will find in the United States. I feel the doctors here are more involved and interested in my quality of life and my quality of death.”

With two houses already built on a former tobacco plantation (and ready to accommodate his future wheelchair), George isn’t much of a vagabond. He does, however, represent what might be a cousin of medical tourism: end-of-life travel. Not to be confused with the suicide tourism of Switzerland or Mexico, end-of-life travel seeks the ideal conditions and company for one’s final days, months, or years. This might be hospice care in Bangalore, a live-in nurse in Peru, or passing in one’s sleep on a beach in Nicaragua.

These motivations for senior travel are driven by pain, loneliness, and the prospect of a bleak future. They raise difficult questions. What does it say about our society when increasing numbers of our elders find the lifestyle and treatment abroad more desirable and affordable than the options at home?

Further, these motivations can’t be limited to the senior crowd. We younger travelers are quick to deny that we’re running away; we define our motivations as entrepreneurial, adrenaline-addicted, or enlightenment-seeking. But how often are we driven (at least in part) by similar feelings, and when will we start admitting it? If we keep silent about any part of what pushes us from home, how will life at home ever become bearable?

See also: Frank Bures‘ World Hum interview with Lawrence Osborne.

Photo by Stephan Geyer via Flickr.