We tell ourselves that there could be many reasons for travel, but in actuality, there are only a few.

1) Those required to go:

These travelers are defined mostly by business travelers, although people who travel for weddings, funerals, and other obligations not dictated by the traveler. In other words, had a certain obligation not existed, they would not have traveled at all.

2) Those who go in order to go:

Checklist travelers, or people who go whose motivations are to say that they went. These are the people who count how many states they've been too, but can't provide any insight of value to why they went beyond the act of travel itself.

3) Those who go towards something:

These are the people who travel in order to find things of value in the place they are visiting. These are the cultural explorers - those who seek experiences either new, or similar (but different in degrees) to those found in their back yard. These are the people who go to Paris to see art up close, or to Tokyo to explore the restaurant scene. These are the people who seek out the culture of the places to which they are heading.

4) Those who go away from something:

These are the people wholook to get away from their life, if only for a moment. It is travel for the sake of breaking up the monotony of every day life. These are the people who go to resorts, or travel on cruises with no ports of call. These are even the people who head out to the movies for two hours or so.

While it would be simple to put ourselves in one category or another, but life is not as simple as that. While our preference may be for one or another, the fact is we carry all of these traits, to some degree or another. Rare is the person who fits into only one of these categories. Rare, but not unheard of.

For our purpose, we want to focus on the third group, and help them find the new experiences specific to the places where they are visiting. We want to push beyond the question of "where?", and dig deeper, asking the questions of why and how as well. The goal isn't to tell readers where they should sleep, eat, or visit. Rather, it's to point out the places that define the city or region, and give voice to the culture that helped shape those places. It is the art of traveling with context.

To put it another way, in form of a metaphor - One can go to a museum, and look at the paintings, and come to some measure of appreciation of their aesthetics. But that only provides a cursory overview of the blood, sweat, and tears that went in to effort of creation of the pieces exhibited. Now imagine visiting a museum that showcased Picasso's work, and provided details of Picasso's life, supplemental work that showed the influences upon him, and work that had been influenced by Picasso. That is context. While one may leave the museum in the first example feeling pleased, those who went to the museum in the second example would have been enriched in ways that the first example could not have provided.

It is this second perspective that we wish to foster in travel - to provide context to travelers that enrich their experiences. Places do not evolve in a vacuum - there are continuous influences that shape each place into what it is today.

Our goal at Tugoto is to explain such influences . This is as close to a mission statement that we have.