Travel doesn’t get much good press these days. Carbon emissions, water shortages, disappearing wildlife... so much of this is blamed on tourism that it’s not hard to see why travel, along with every other pleasure in life, has now become tainted by guilt, a feeling that it’s selfish and we somehow shouldn’t be doing it.

So last week I was delighted to hear the broadcaster and academic Laurie Taylor give an amusing talk on the value of travel to the annual conference of the Association of Independent Tour Operators (Aito) in Estoril, Portugal. It was all the more welcome because the conference had just spent a day debating tourism’s role in climate change – and much of the news wasn’t too cheery.

The reason travel matters, explained the charismatic Taylor, and why the small, enthusiastic, special-interest tour operators that typically make up Aito’s membership provide such an important service, is that it allows us, quite simply, to be ourselves. The world of work for the most part doesn’t encourage expression and individuality.

For those of us who spend the bulk of our lives in the modern office, where chatter has been replaced by e-mail, plain English replaced by management-speak, and where so many feel anonymous, silenced and misunderstood, travel offers a chance to reclaim our true identities and nurture our interests, whether it’s touring champagne vineyards in France or bungee jumping in New Zealand (or even risking a dunking in Antarctic waters).

A holiday isn’t about a rest, but the reverse: it’s about being alive. It’s an experience, a two-week chapter in our lives when we can abandon the shackles of routine and conformity, and embrace something that reconnects us with the world. To illustrate this sense of adventure and colour that we yearn for, Taylor quoted a beautiful phrase by the poet Louis MacNeice, who wrote of the “drunkenness of things being various”.

I don’t think I’ve heard a better argument in favour of travel, or a more insightful explanation why so many of us love to do it. The global boom in tourism presents huge challenges, but we shouldn’t forget that journeys allow all of us, rich or poor, a vital period of psychological freedom.

This week’s budget issue is not only a practical guide to saving money, but also a homage to what Taylor was getting at: authentic experiences that help us to reclaim our sense of self. And for “authentic”, you can more often than not read “budget”.

The best travel is not about blowing the cash on rooms with gold taps, it’s about adventure, discovery and serendipity: that magic find, chance meeting or thrilling ride. Often, it’s the budget experience that offers these things in bucket-loads, while the luxury version, in its drive to make everything comfortable and hassle-free, has had all the fun, vigour and danger drained out of it – rather like the modern office, in fact.

So, if you’re spending yet another Saturday mentally shaking a fist at the humdrum tyranny of your workplace, maybe it’s time for a holiday. There’s a whole world out there, where paper-pushing finishes, and life, in all its drunken variousness, begins.

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