It’s the beginning of summer, which for Cambridge students can only mean one thing: our Instagram feeds will be flooded for the next few months with the exotic travels and adventures of our friends, all of which inevitably seem so much cooler than our own. After months of university residency requirements, it’s like a competition to see how much distance you can put between yourself and Great St Mary’s. There are few things Cambridge students love more than travel.
This makes it slightly surprising that the Cambridge Travel Society, described on its website as “a new society for Cambridge students interested in travel,” was only founded in 2022. Despite its youth, the Society has an impressive social media page replete with videos of members rolling down sand dunes and gazing at waterfalls, and a snazzy website promising student socials for people passionate about travel, partnerships with travel companies for exclusive deals, and small group trips to interesting places.
Now, if there is anything Cambridge students love more than travelling, it’s talking about travelling. Perhaps that’s why I have such little difficulty in finding some committee members willing to sit down with me and talk about the Society and where it’s going – no pun intended.
“It often starts with just looking at Skyscanner and seeing what the cheap flights are”
When I meet Laurence Davies, the Society’s new president, he gives the definite impression of a busy man. He arrives hot off the back of helping to organise the Catz May Ball, and he’s soon telling me about a summer trip to Turkmenistan which he’s planning. Turkmenistan is not for the faint of heart, as the Foreign Office travel advice suggests, so I’m reassured when he tells me that this is just something he and a few friends are doing, not an official Society trip. But it already shows the adventurousness that characterises some of the membership.
Organising trips of about 20-30 people to other countries is the main activity of the Society so far. And the destination list, while not including Turkmenistan, is still impressive: Krakow, Lisbon, Bratislava, and Bruno, Marrakesh. How are the locations chosen? “It often starts with just looking at Skyscanner and seeing what the cheap flights are,” Davies breezily answers, although he adds that ideally one of the people organising the trip will have been to the destination before.
The Travel Society organises the whole trip, including transport and accommodation. Those attending just have to pay the fee. The Society also organises an itinerary, although attendees aren’t obliged to follow it. “We’re not a school trip,” Davies says.
Certainly not, if I am to believe the stories that Dhruv Sharma, a previous trips officer, tells me. How many school trips involve visiting the Sahara Desert and staying the night at a Berber campsite, as they did in Morocco? Or include a boozy boating trip, as happened in Syracuse? “These are not lean trips, ″ Sharma boasts.
“The Society puts a lot of work into being affordable for as many people as possible”
One thing I’m keen to ask about is affordability. When I told a friend of mine I was writing about the Travel Society, he remarked: “Isn’t that just a bunch of well-off people jetting around Europe together?” However, at least from what I hear, this is far from the truth. Sushant Patil, last year’s publicity officer, stresses that the Society puts a lot of work into being affordable for as many people as possible. For one thing, due to the relatively large group sizes, the Society has much more negotiating power and can buy in bulk when it comes to arranging things like food and entry costs, bringing prices down. And unlike other companies that arrange travel for you, the Society is not for profit and offers the trips at cost.
I had a poke around on their Instagram to see how well this holds up. On the one hand, their trip to China this summer will set you back an eye-watering £750-£850, not including international flights or daily meals. But on the other hand, the trip to Morocco was only £199 for a member, and even accounting for the fact that this price doesn’t include flights, that isn’t much more than some May Balls, and it’s probably a lot better value for money.
Davies also tells me that the Society is looking to attract corporate sponsorship in the coming year, which might allow them to offer bursaries to students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend, and they are considering domestic trips or trips not involving air travel, which would hopefully be cheaper. But he does admit that there may be a limit as to what the Society can do: “Travel can only be so affordable.”
Sharma speaks passionately about the significance of travel for personal and social development. “It makes you more open, more accepting.” He points out that, for example, the visit to Morocco may have been some people’s first time in a non-western, low-income country. Each member of the Society has to decide what they want to get out of travel, but Sharma says that, as far as the Society itself is concerned, “we believe that travel is inherently good.”
I’m interested to hear him say that. Saying “I’d like to travel more” has become something of a cliché nowadays – we’ve all heard it in a thousand icebreakers and seen it in a thousand dating app profiles. But travel is also becoming increasingly controversial, with fears about its environmental impact and the risks of over-tourism giving many with delicate consciences pause before pressing “book now” on Ryanair’s website. In such a climate, it may be no bad thing that there is a group in Cambridge willing to unapologetically stand up for travel.
