'People have become obsessed with travelling ever further and faster. However, travel is expensive, dangerous, damaging and a foolish waste of time!'

Write an article for a news website in which you argue your point of view on this statement.

(24 marks for content and organisation
16 marks for technical accuracy)

### Is Your Passport a Waste of Paper? Why We Must Keep Exploring. There’s a growing chorus of voices claiming that our wanderlust has become a reckless obsession. Travel, they say, is a cocktail of expense, danger, and environmental damage—a 'foolish waste of time'. While we must acknowledge the challenges of modern travel, to dismiss it entirely is to dismiss one of the most fundamental human urges: the desire to see what’s over the horizon. Let’s address the first charge: expense. Yes, a two-week trip to the Maldives can cost a fortune. But travel is not just about five-star resorts. It’s about a weekend camping trip two hours from home, discovering a local history you never knew. It’s about budget airlines and hostels, where you meet people from twenty different countries and share stories over a cheap bowl of noodles. The value of these experiences—the new perspectives, the burst of confidence from navigating a new city—is an investment in yourself that pays dividends long after your bank account has recovered. What about the danger? The world can seem like a scary place from behind a screen. Yet, the greatest danger for many of us is not a foreign land, but a stagnant life. Travel forces us to be resourceful, to trust strangers, to solve problems on the fly. It replaces prejudice with personal experience. The kindness I was shown when I was lost in Tokyo, or the shared laughter with a market seller in Marrakesh who spoke no English—these moments don’t make the headlines, but they are the true reality of travel for millions. They build bridges, not walls. Of course, we cannot ignore the environmental impact. The carbon footprint of air travel is significant and demands a response. But the answer isn’t to stop travelling; it’s to travel better. It’s choosing to take trains instead of short-haul flights, supporting local eco-lodges instead of multinational hotel chains, and spending longer in one place to truly connect with it. Responsible tourism can protect endangered habitats and provide sustainable incomes for communities that would otherwise be lost. The traveller’s dollar, spent wisely, can be a powerful force for good. Ultimately, to call travel a 'foolish waste of time' is a profound misunderstanding of what it means to be human. It’s how we learn, how we grow, and how we connect. It is the antidote to ignorance and the architect of empathy. So yes, let’s travel slower, smarter, and more thoughtfully. But we must never stop.