How travel changed my perspective

Everyone reacts to travel differently. For some, it’s just a holiday. For me it’s the ‘disconnect’ that I crave, and embrace with open arms when the time for travel comes round again. I see my life as being dormant during the usual monotonous work stuff, the normal day to day, but then the power is turned on and ramped up when I board that plane.

I love the 'little rituals' before the travel - I adore the getting ready, the planning, the anticipation of what’s to come. Alain de Botton wrote beautifully about this in his book “The Art of Travel” about anticipation vs reality.

For me the two go hand in hand, and the reality never disappoints. Ofcourse each destination is different and the individuals who travel with you add their spin to the trip. I’ve spent the last few years gradually exploring a few parts of this world, and I feel like those experiences have not only majorly shaped me but kept me sane. It’s right that I can only have those experiences due to being financially comfortable and economical (saving etc), and there is an empirical element to travel, but I still feel at the very core of it that whilst my world here at Delhi and the world in a tiny town of Galle or in the haunted ruins of Cambodia is so far apart in material ways, it’s the same on a totally human level. The problem for me is that the mundane life doesn’t fulfill, and travel helps me to remember and cherish what for me, it is to be human. Community, family, trust, pain, recovery, joy, innocence, heartbreak - all these are embodied in the stories of almost all the places I have visited. These are all things that travel has shown me in ways that the stoic and predictable life here never could. Travel showed me, and continues to, the important things in life. When I escape for my paltry few days, I gorge on those times, I embrace those experiences in every pore of my being. I know they have to feed me for the times to come, until I can wander once more.

There will be cynics and sceptics out there who’ll get all antsy and exasperated, but some people will totally get it. It’s exactly what we travel for isn’t it? To share our experiences, to live outside of the boxes that modern life so often tries to place us into. I spent most of my life yearning to break free, to travel, but I also realise how fortunate I am to be able to vote, to have a say, to have power, to not have greed and fear looming over me every day, as so many do still in the places we all travel to. I just want to understand, as patronising at that may be, the different, the alternative. Maybe travel makes us also realise how lucky we are to have what we have in our lives. It doesn’t seem to stop or inhibit me wanting to jump on the next plane though.