Reasons why I love Travelling:
Years of skimming through the brightly-coloured garish catalogues of travel companies promising “Hi-fi Adventure” and “Amazing Scenery at Low Prices” while I travelled, clueless and disconcerted, not knowing where the travel guide would take us next, and not knowing when I would get the next meal, often makes me wonder why we get so excited and upbeat at the prospect of travelling.
Sure, experiencing new stuff is good, but there are so many things one can do.
Let us assume for this moment that I’m a plain Jane and I have a desk job which is boring and involves me doing monotonous stuff. And I know that the job isn’t suiting me because I often daydream of nailing the resignation letter on my boss’s forehead.
If I were in a movie, then I would go on a world tour and attain enlightenment in the Indian Ashrams/ find love at the other end of the world/ discover my passion for Scuba Diving/ A combination of the above or something along those lines. But why do most people completely ignore the cons when they fantasize about travel? For instance, it isn’t really free. You have to shell out quite a few bucks to buy an air ticket, and you have to have a lot of time to spare too.
It comes with its share of hardships. Imagine getting diarrhoea on the first day of your trip. Or having issues with food. Or both. Why do you need to put up with all of it when you can be snug and comfortable in your room, and have the food your body is accustomed to? The issue of safety. Fear of being kidnapped, killed, drugged, robbed, etc. And the biggest con possibly would be the overemphasis on travel as being a panacea. What if Jane’s life does not change by a reasonable amount, and when she comes back home everything’s the same all over again? What if there’s no sense of purpose discovered, no escaping route in sight?
I can taste my own sweat while I trudge on, huffing and panting while I try climbing a hill. There’s not once when I’m not scared of falling and dying. And then, yes. With a lot of effort and help and after giving up a million times only to give up on protesting itself, we find ourselves in a place with a heavenly-breathtaking view. Grins are exchanged between friends. And we all know that not one of us regrets the trip. And now I can taste something new; exhilaration fills me and overflows from me so that I can feel it on my tongue.
What made this trip worthwhile for me?
- The thrill of adventure gave me a sense of self-fulfilment nothing else could give. The feeling of achievement I got after reaching my destination having cleared various obstacles gave me the confidence and the courage to battle every other problem in life to emerge victorious.
- The time I stole from my everyday life to spend on my friends, and on myself, gave me a feeling of self-reclamation. All the stuff which makes my life worth living was waiting to be rediscovered.
- Surviving on bare minimums during the trip, I realized that there was more to happiness than simply good clothes and good food. Happiness transcended material boundaries and became an omnipresent entity which trickled in through the windows of train travels and floated around in the fresh morning air of an unknown place.
- Living in Mumbai was always my dream, but there’s this thing about the metropolis life: It suffocates your ability to notice anything which does not have a glaring neon sign board. Perhaps that’s because you’re so embroiled in your day-to-day routine that all you want is live a day successfully, complete the task in hand and go to sleep. However cliché it may sound, the trip made me one with nature, and made me realize that there is absolutely nothing which can beat the tranquillity of nature.
- But the best of all was, being able to free myself of all my apprehensions and giving in happily to my own primal instincts of wanting to discover more of the big big world. All my worries of inconveniences and tribulations now existed in a parallel universe.
And this is why you don’t need to be a romantic to love travel. Travel is not simply the places the colourful catalogues lure you with. It is a way of discovering your true self.