In the Grip of the Group

I've done lots of traveling since I passed the half-century mark, much of it undercover -- that is, without announcing that I was the editor of The New York Times travel section. I wanted to experience the journey the way my readers would, without any special favors given or received.

Some of those trips were package tours. As you may have noticed, most articles about travel are written by people who tour on their own. Since group trips are so popular, particularly among the post-50 set, I thought the travel section should include some stories about them, and I volunteered to do the writing. I have since taken a total of five package tours -- to Greece, Israel, Russia, China, and Vietnam.

Yes, group tours have a bad rep in some circles. Unless you've signed up for a pricey package, the kind offered by a museum or university, you can find yourself in a blah hotel on the outskirts of every city you visit, dining on nondescript food. You may spend endless hours on a bus, speeding by sites the guidebooks say you "must see" so the group can spend more time at a gift shop. And whether your tour is down-market or upscale, you might have to endure weeks-long, enforced intimacy with people you don't enjoy. As Mark Twain put it, "There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."

I've experienced all of that and more on one or another package tour, but, of course, it's not the whole story. The big advantage of a group trip is that the tour operator takes care of all the arrangements. In return for surrendering some freedom of choice, you're relieved of responsibility. You don't have to worry about which car to rent or where a train station is located, which sites to visit or how to communicate in a foreign tongue, where to have breakfast or how to deal with luggage.

That's the essential trade-off, and for many of us older folks in particular, it's a terrific deal. Now that we're retired, we finally have the time to travel, but may no longer have the physical stamina or psychic energy for taking on the world on our own. Package tours make it possible for us to enormously enrich our lives. Mark Twain had something to say about that, as well: "Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

Aside from the convenience of the package tour, the danger that you'll dislike members of your group is matched by the likelihood that you'll find one or more who are really congenial. You get to see more than the world on these trips -- you also gain new insights into yourself in relation to others. In the hothouse of the package tour, strangers can quickly flower into friends. I'm still in touch with some fellow travelers from Israel and Vietnam I first encountered years ago.

If there is one lesson I've carried away from my years as a travel writer and editor, it's this: You can't win. Whatever I had to say about a trip would inspire letters from readers complaining that they'd had the opposite experience. I once wrote an article about that, which I titled "The Rashomon Connection." Different people react to the same thing differently, depending on their personalities and mood.

This much I have to say about group tours, though: When I added up my impressions of any of those trips I made, despite a bad dinner here or a disagreeable group member there, I came away grateful for the experience. I realized that, whatever else went on, the journey to a new land had stretched my mind and stirred my heart. Life at its best indeed!

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Robert W. Stock, a New York Times alumnus, is a writer and editor based in New York.