Throughout human history, traveling has held a different value for people of different countries and time periods. To people living in the Paleolithic time period, traveling was essential for survival. Whether it was following their prey or escaping harsh weather conditions, traveling defined the lifestyle for these nomads. During the Han Dynasty in China, people traveled along the silk road in the world's first international trade business. Fast forward some centuries to the Puritan times where people traveled across the pond to escape religious oppression. Today, these same reasons still apply to why people travel except that traveling today takes on a less weighty cause. People still travel for business or a new lifestyle, but the more modern concept would be for personal pleasure. Today people travel to have a getaway or have new experiences, but whether they intend to or not, people will also gain wisdom on their excursions. Traveling to escape a lifestyle takes on different meanings between older times and today. In the past centuries, many people may have escaped their native land in search of freedom, but today escaping, for the most part, is only temporary. Many businesses provide their employees with vacation time off of work, because they understand the importance for workers to rejuvenate their minds. When people stay in their work cycles for too long a period of time, they "burn out". They grow irritable, fatigued, and lose their ability to concentrate, therefor degenerating their productivity. For this reason, people use their time off of work to travel. Instead of simply not working, they want to escape their everyday responsibilities at home. Traveling to a non-native land allows the mind to focus on learning its new surroundings rather than perform the usual everyday tasks. Upon returning home from the vacation trip, the traveler will feel refreshed and relaxed. Much like the effects of sleep, traveling recharges and builds more alert minds. Whether one travels seeking knowledge or not, everyone has something valuable to learn on the trip. As mentioned before, many people travel to have and learn through new experiences. Experiencing different cultures is vital for everyone, because in the ethnically diverse community most people live in today, understanding other cultures is the key to tolerance. Without this tolerance, the world would not be as advanced as it is today. International business would not exist because of the lack of tolerance in differences. This is also why many corporate companies want to fund college study abroad scholarships. They understand that their future lies in college students, so they want their businesses to be carried on by knowledgeable, well-rounded people who will be successful in international exchanges. The reason why someone cannot gain the same knowledge through books or journals is simply that experience is the best teacher. In the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha is a respected and privileged young man who has everything he could ever need, except he still craves wisdom. He realizes that he must get out of his home town and experience the world in order to truly gain more knowledge. No amount of prestigious teachers will be able to communicate the knowledge they have acquired unto him, because he will not understand it. In the end Siddhartha realizes that his own experience around the world gave him the wisdom he had hoped for. The saying goes "practice makes perfect". Practice being the actual travel experience can be the sure way to learn rather than researching or reading.
For the daring, traveling is not only time to get away but an opportunity to have different experiences only available in other countries. The fun part about being in another country is experiencing, first hand, the culture by temporarily living the life and customs of the native people. This includes different festivities and styles of celebration for