Travel and holiday mean different things to different people. As they say different strokes for different folks. My wife and I also have our own views about the trips we plan. I can only talk about my perspective. As everyone knows it is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind and as such my wife’s view normally changes with time. Mine on the other hand is relatively fixed. Although I must say that it has taken several years to evolve to this relatively fixed position. Quite clearly men are from Mars and women from Venus.
Before going ahead, I must share my deep desire for a one year sabbatical. The pure intention for the sabbatical being to travel the world. Every year I promise myself that next year will be that year and every year I have to give it a miss. Life and its pressures take over and kill my sabbatical.
Travel for us has been almost a religion. We travel at every possible opportunity. It is almost an addiction. If there is a choice between something material and travel we almost always choose travel. From the time we started dating, my wife always said that if she had a choice between jewellery and travel she would definitely go for the travel. For us travel has always been the only choice.
We have now been together for over thirty years. But the desire hasn’t dipped even a bit.
The main thing for me when I travel is that I want to stay in a place as opposed to visit a place. I like to experience life as the locals live it. My focus is not on a checklist of places to visit in the area, but on experiencing the local life… the local grocery stores and markets, the local eateries and watering holes, the nearest library, walking tracks, etc. To engage with the local community and I love the idea when local store owners and vendors start recognising me. I feel a strong connect then.
This intense desire to experience local living means that an ideal length of a holiday for me would be at least a month and if possible even two months. Honestly life does not give you such opportunities due to work pressures. Four to five weeks we do manage once a year. Of course, Homestays are wonderful for such trips.
Every trip I plan is normally around this thought. Sadly to date I have not managed my ideal holiday, but Dream I must.
Another aspect is that I love to repeat the places I visit. Taking time out of our daily routines is meant to give us an opportunity to renew ourselves. To rejuvenate. To gather up all the broken bits of our lives and work towards making ourselves whole again. To review life gone by. To assess and plan our course ahead. To create mind space away from the drudgery, mind space to stop and enjoy some special moments.
To sooth those frayed edges. To heal the wounds. To look for our true selves again. To connect with our loved ones.
When I visit new places I am back in a different learning phase. I want to know everything possible about the new environment. My energy is spent in exploring and not in resting and restoring. A good kind of effort. But it takes time. Time to understand the nuances of a new space. Time that we never seem to have. All that happens is that we barely touch the surface of new spaces that we visit for the few days that life allows us. But if we make several visits to the same location then we really begin to understand and connect. We are able to establish a presence in the local community and we are able to impact and be impacted by the locals. And I truly enjoy that. I love being recognised as I walk into a cafe or a store.
I want to be able to live each day. I am not interested in keeping score of my travel exploits. And I don’t like the pressure to cover ground, to see as much as possible when I visit a new place.
And then there are cities like London…. where every area is a different experience. This vast city is an amalgamation of tiny cities.
Each different in its own special way. If one was to book homestays in different parts of the city before and after the peak holiday season then you can really experience every local area in its true spirit.
In conclusion though I want to express a different thought.
A contradiction in many ways. You might think this writer is definitely a bit confused. It seems I am mellowing, not my wife though. For me in the recent few months the spark to travel is a bit less. When it does rear its pretty little head, more and more I only want to repeat the places I have been to and station myself there for extended periods of time. In recent times there has been a lot of financial stress and so travel has been less than we would like in any case. And now with the current virus challenges in any case it is completely banned. Living at home has to be experienced like an encapsulated holiday.
Written By Mohit Gupta
Week 13, March ’19
