There is an application in the popular Facebook social network that allows you to show your friends the countries and cities you have visited so far.
Its a map of the world, with little pop-up pins sticking out of the places you have been to. And I know some people take great pleasure in showing off just how many thumb-tacks they have displayed. Its like,
look at me, I'm a Globetrotter you know! It doesn't matter to these people, I suspect, that if you take a drive from Nelson to Invercargill on New Zealand's South Island, you actually pass by many of the major towns that can be happily marked on the map as having been 'visited'. Does it matter that you only stopped in Timaru for a pee? That's another city up for the count.
Well at 34, I suppose I count myself reasonably well-travelled. But then again, if you consider that I haven't set foot in Africa, South America or Scandinavia, let alone the Arctic and Antarctic, I think a little reconsideration of the
trotter status is in order. But is it really a numbers game? What does it mean when we say we have
Travelled. Because if travelling simply denotes the act of getting from Point A to Point B, with a little business or pleasure thrown in between for good measure, then certainly my map would be bursting with pins.
As I sat in 3rd Class, on an old grimy 'Express' train to Ayutthaya just the other day, it suddenly dawned upon me that perhaps I haven't really travelled much the past 3 decades and a half.
This sudden flash of 'brillance' has unglam underpinings. My butt-cheeks were aching badly from the extremely hard seats and we were woefully bemoaning our lack of foresight in having planned this sojourn to the Ancient Capital a little better. We could have gotten ourselves 1st Class plush cushions in an air-conditioned cabin had the tickets been purchased one day before. Gawd! and I thought the old North Borneo Express was bad last September. This was several times worst.
And so when I knocked my head for the upteenth time on the paint-peeled window sill while dozing off, I asked myself, do we plan to travel, or do we travel to plan?
You know I used to draw up beautiful itineraries for all my trips. With every minute detail covered to the second. How else did we manage to complete 11 Japanese cities in 2 weeks? Or take in almost all of New South Wales, Victoria and Canberra in 11 days? It was sheer precision at work. Much like the efficient
Shinkansens that pull up at the sterile Nipponese platforms, plus or minus a few milliseconds from the scheduled timetable. I also had EXCEL spreadsheets on the laptop I brought for holidays where the battle plans of which sights to visit, and at what time of day (or night), were meticulously drawn out. The result of it all? I usually got to see almost all the major points of interest in the shortest time possible. The Plans became my comfort zone.
But I realise now that although I saw alot, I really experienced nothing.
Is this what we call travelling? By the sheer number of miles and sights it is. But if you have ever made that unscheduled detour only to be pleasantly surprised by the wealth of smells and sounds the Guidebooks don't tell you about, or had a long impromptu chat with the security guard of your hotel over a takeaway coffee at midnight about the imminent return of Thaksin to Thailand, or having decided to skip the buffet breakfast for a morning jog to the neighbourhood grocer for some fruits, you find yourself reading the paper at the corner newstand till lunchtime while munching an apple, you will know that sometimes, we really need to just travel and see where the next plan (or whim) takes us.
I suppose its this fear of the unknown that compels us to strategize and agonize over details. We then become slaves to our own plans. I haven't met anyone who has totally embraced the unknown. And yet, it is only when we venture into the Unknown, the wild blue yonder as it were, would the envelop of unfamiliarity, ironically, bring us out of our shells and make us real Travellers. The outcomes need not always be favourable and no doubt, the thought of being on a packaged tourbus with the warm and reassuring spectre of the Guide upfront babbling into the microphone, will sometimes tempt us.
However I reckon we will be richer for the experience of thinking on our own 2 feet, of being able to resolve real-time issues with real-time logic, and of reaching that final destination clinging onto the behind of a swerving schoolbus only to discover that your camera has fallen and rolled into a ditch 10 miles behind. Of doings things in a foreign land you would normally not even think about, let alone plan about.
We must start being aliens in a strange land, before we can even begin to call ourselves Travellers.
In some ways, such isolation is a pre-requisite.
Labels: Musings, Travel