What Travel does to you…

If the choice were to be a vagabond, I would globe trot, as there is no education like travel and no faith like humanity. Travel makes one humble, compassionate, opinionated, adjusting, and worldly. It has been my good fortune to be able to travel a bit. Like every travel is meant to be a reason for some learning.

Every destination has a significance, but I think more than that, it is the people, who make it worth remembering. Like I told in my earlier blogs about the monk from Nainital, the hermit from Uttarakhand Trek and the old lady from the Himalayas.

There was also this stranger who came out of nowhere amidst the remoteness of Gurudongmar Lake, Sikkim to help me with my daughter who had developed breathing issues.

My hotel owner in Leh, who arrived early morning, unexpectedly with breakfast at the hospital I was admitted. No one told him to do so.

The stranger who discussed with me about his stolen coin collection in Benaras.

The local woman in the marketplace who offered fresh peas to eat and invited me for tea at her home in Kaza, Spiti

The local Doctor couple from Arunachal Pradesh who gave me loads of love and oranges from their orchard instead of medicines, when my stomach was upset with the travel food. Their aura itself healed me.

And the list goes on… These and many other stranger experiences are heart-warming and humane.

But I dedicate this blog to one stranger who led and shadowed us (My friend and me) to an unsecured location, just because we were keen to see the place and could not locate it.

This happened in Pondicherry. My friend and I rented a scooty and went around every possible place in the town. There was one place along the promenade, a pier that extended into the sea. We watched it for three days from different locations. It looked far and beautiful against the setting sun.

The pier as seen from the Lighthouse Beach

My friend and I tried every way to get to this place, but we would land elsewhere. After quite some attempts and being misled by google maps, we went and inquired for the directions in a shop. With the language barrier, we could only communicate with the local shopkeeper by showing the image of the pier. He guided us, but we did not understand Tamil.

While we tried making sense of each other's language, a local man visiting the shop asked the shopkeeper what was the discussion about? The shopkeeper told him what we were looking for. He asked us to show the image. He could speak broken English. He asked us to follow his bike. He took us through a labyrinth of lanes and by-lanes, through a local fishing village, right in front of the pier.

My friend and I were overly excited and happy.

It was 6.45 pm. He stood there with us, saying, “Hurry up, take your photographs and let us leave.” While I took the photographs, my friend went a little ahead to explore the sea. He warned me, "Call your friend back, ask her not to go further." I thought, he is just cautious about my friend getting into the danger of the rising tide. He was clearly panicking.

He warned me again, "Ask your friend to come back." I signaled my friend to come back and that is when he started narrating to me the reason for his panic. "They practice illegal sex trade on this beach after 7 pm and it is not safe for you both here." In the meantime, a constable stationed around there also blew a whistle at us asking us to go away. I verified with the stranger what he just said, just that I got him right.

This huge burly stranger, told me, "You are new here, and you don't know things here. You wanted to see the place, that is why I brought you here. But this is not safe, let us go back." I was a little shocked by the fact he shared as well as touched by his concern for us. That is when he went on to prove by saying, "I am a fisherman, and we fishermen sleep at night under this pier." Then he went on to tell something very innocently. He said, "I am newly married, and I do not pose any harm to you. But let us go now."

My friend was back. I narrated everything to her. We listened to him and left from there following the stranger's bike, just as we had come. Once outside the fishing village, we thanked him enough for making our small wish come true. 

I was touched by this stranger's gentleness and the fact that he came along with us leaving all the possible things he was supposed to do otherwise. We parted ways and I felt comforted by the feeling that we are guest in his town, and he took it as his responsibility to protect and warn us enough, and at the same time to make us do what we wished to.

This stranger and many more make travel beautiful. They make you reinstate trust in people and build warmth and comfort.

To many such travel experiences that shape you and make you the person you are, this has been one of those experiences for me.

Last year in Lucknow, in a busy market, I was buying fruits near a public toilet and a heavily pregnant lady walked up to me and asked me to hold her purse, so she could use the toilet. For a moment I was scared, as that purse could hold just anything. But as the many strangers who helped me during my travel, I took the purse and waited for this stranger. She relieved herself and was very thankful to me for holding her bag.

When you travel and meet different people, sometimes in a moment, things change. Strangers become humans, acquaintance, or friends. But Humans we are, and travel makes us reveal our human side often.