Sep 22: From time immemorial, travel was considered to be one of the most scholarly exercises. Long before classrooms and degrees, knowledge was gained by walking the earth.
Great travellers like Hiuen Tsang and Fa-Hien from China, Ibn Batuta from Morocco, and Nicolo Conti from Venice travelled across continents and wrote detailed memoirs. Those memoirs did not remain mere stories; they became the major source of history. Sir Alexander Cunningham, the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, made his greatest discoveries — Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Nalanda, Kushinagar, Lumbini and Takshila — by using the travel accounts of Hiuen Tsang and Fa-Hien, translated from Chinese to French and then to English, as his guidebooks.
This proves that travel has always been the greatest source of learning.
India’s own tradition celebrates this. Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan, one of the greatest scholars India has produced, was also its greatest Ghumakkad. His book Ghumakkad Shastra argues that travelling itself is a Shastra — a disciplined science of learning. Honoured as Mahapandit for his scholarship, he was among the first Indians to cross the Himalayas into Tibet, bringing back hundreds of rare Buddhist manuscripts, translating them from Tibetan to Hindi and English. Many of those scriptures today lie in the Patna Museum, a living testimony to how travel rescues a civilization’s memory.
The NEP 2020 Shift: Learning Outside the Classroom
The National Education Policy 2020 has officially revived this ancient Indian wisdom. For the first time, it places experiential learning at the centre of education. NEP clearly states that learning should happen more outside the classroom than inside it.
Rote learning is replaced by learning by doing, seeing, and experiencing. Educational trips, field visits, and travel for education are no longer extracurricular — they are curricular.
Why? Because India cannot be understood in a textbook.
Discovering India by Travelling India
When a student travels, he discovers India’s rich heritage not as a chapter, but as a living reality:
Heritage, Art and Craft: From the terracotta of Bishnupur to the Patachitra of Pingla, from the weavers of Benares to the stone carvers of Mahabalipuram, craft is best learnt in the artisan’s courtyard.
Agriculture and Horticulture: A farm in Punjab, a tea garden in Darjeeling, a spice plantation in Kerala, or the floating gardens of Sundarbans teach more about agriculture, climate and economy than any diagram.
Geography and Ecology: The Thar desert, the Western Ghats, the Sundarban mangroves and the Himalayan valleys explain geography, biodiversity and climate change in one journey.
Archaeology and Anthropology: Standing inside Nalanda’s ruins, walking through Dholavira, or living with a tribal community in Bastar teaches us about our glorious past, our present diversity, and our social fabric.
Educational travel thus connects three timelines: it makes students aware of India’s glorious past, helps them assess the current status and possibilities of its resources and industries, and inspires them to imagine future possibilities for the country.
In an age of Google, travel gives what screens cannot — context, empathy, and lived experience. A true Ghumakkad does not just see a place; he understands it.
That is why, from Hiuen Tsang to Rahul Sankrityayan to NEP 2020, the message is the same: To truly learn, you must truly travel.