"I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones, female and male, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests"
(Ibn Battuta, world wanderer)

A journey is not a holiday. "Journey" and "holiday" are two distinct concepts, the first belonging to a higher sphere, the second to a lower one.

Travelling is a quest for knowledge and experience, a quest for an ideal, an aspiration, a shared sense of consciousness of a global collection of like-minded individuals who maintain more or less the same beliefs and practices, and who, as such, compose a single, unified and divine community of universalist, spiritual, moral and social values.

The world is full of diversities and eclecticism, a veritable cornucopia of contrasting beliefs, practices, customs and traditions.
Migrations and the steady flow of people - over the centuries - across national borders have moulded this world thanks to multiculture and the sharing and melting of cultures, habits, traditions, languages, beliefs.
Nowadays we are accustomed to call this phenomenon "globalization" for describing the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across borders.
But make no mistake: the world at the time, for instance, of the ancient Romans, was as globalized as the world we live in today.
This was in large part due to the Pax Romana. By creating one of the largest territorial empires in history, the Romans encouraged the flow of goods and people across the vast distances under their domain. With the expansion of trade routes came an increase in cultural interactions, as merchants and scholars moved freely from one city to another. It was the golden age which came closer than any other medieval society to establishing a common world order of social and even cultural standards.
In modern times, colonialism, western imperialism, and civil wars have exacted their toll on this ancient cultural and artistic dominance.