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Traveling is a brutality. Obliged to trust strangers and to
lose sight of the familiar comfort of home and friends. You feel constantly off
balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the
sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.
-C.Pavese
The experiences of this trip to India have really given
examples of why I have a love (90%)/hate (10%) relationship with travel. I had
been reflecting on some themes and then I saw this quote posted on Facebook by
my friend Brian B. and it summed up my feelings about why I travel.
First and foremost, I travel to experience intensity of
feelings and emotions. Turning the corner in Mehtab Bagh at sunset and having
seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time, bathed in orange and purples, was
every bit as breathtaking as advertised, and then some. The beauty of that
moment nearly brought me to tears is something I could ONLY have felt by
sitting on the banks of the Yamana River at dusk. The effort to get to that one
hour of incredible peace and contentment, that moment where everything in my
world is good is only experienced when I travel.
The intensity of emotions runs the gamut of great serenity and
happiness to sheer panic and fear. What else could I have felt when I got
awoken by the train ticket collector at 2315 and finding out that I had missed
getting off the train at my stop in Agra? Having started the day early in
Kolkata, taken a flight to Delhi and then the last leg of the journey being a
three-hour train ride and all I wanted was to get to my homestay bed. All I
could do for the next 40 minutes was run though all the worst-case scenarios in
my mind. I had to muster all my will to keep my emotions in control (control,
we’ll be coming back to THAT one in a bit). But in the course of my travels, I
have had things ALWAYS work out and I needed to trust that in this case, things
again would work out if I stayed patient. After reaching the next train station
in the town of Dholpur, I got off and was met by the dark and quiet of an empty
train station. But the train ticket counter was still open and I found out that
a train going back to Agra was available in a half hour. The sudden feeling of
joy and relief in that split second is only felt so sharply when I travel.
Having something go your way when things have gone oh so wrong, and the
happiness of that moment is why I travel.
The additional bonus of that midnight hour stay at the
station in Dholpur is that I got into a conversation with the station agent, a
young Indian man with limited English ability, about life in the United States
and our president Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
He always made a point of saying President Obama’s middle name, with the
emphasis on Hussein. It seems to me that I have more of these memorable
serendipitous meetings with people like the incredibly charming and humorous
Indian train station agent, Fahid was his name, when I travel. Perhaps I have
them also in the course of my day-to-day life, but they aren’t as vivid or
memorable.
Talking to Fahid was fun because he was so eager to converse
with me. However, when I travel alone, which I do most of the time (I miss you
my travel companion DD!!) I inevitably crave human interaction just to have a
conversation and process an experience or simply out of necessity because I
need help. Traveling forces me to make conversation with other travelers and
even though our paths cross for mere moments in time, I am forced out of my comfort
zone of introversion. About half the time, the people I talk to I find boring
and uninteresting, but other times, they are fascinating people and I learn
(both about other places to travel and about their lives) so much from talking
with them. Or as in the case of the moment I exited Howrah train station in
Kolkata and had NO idea how to get through the swarm of people and get a taxi
to my hotel, I force myself to talk to the only Caucasian looking guy who
invites me to share a cab with him (Panic, relief and joy all in a five minute
stretch, that’s travel!). In our taxi ride, I learn about his yoga ashram
(interesting….) and then find out he doesn’t have a room to stay that night and
I invite him to share my room (got to pay back the karma, right?) He eventually
declined. I am particularly proud of my efforts to talk with people on this
trip to India. (DD you would have been quite proud of me! And I have a great
teacher in Brian B.) My successes on this trip will carry over to help me be
more comfortable striking up conversations with people in my everyday life.
Let’s get back to the issue of control. Some may quibble
that the issue of planning ahead isn’t the classic definition of “control
freak,” but I will use the term control to talk about planning. I am a planner,
or at least prefer to live when there is a plan or a semblance of one. However,
travel is always teaching me that there is a fine line between having a plan,
and thereby getting to see all things you want and then not having a plan and
thereby being able live in the moment and experience more of the unexpected. I
was “punched in the emotional gut” when, at the beginning of my two weeks in
India, I found out that ALL the trains running north to near Darjeeling were
booked. I had so wanted to see the mountains and drink the tea and just wander
around in the fresh air. I got nailed by lack of planning because I was too
“busy” to figure out how to make reservations on the Indian Railways website.
On the flip side, my lack of planning allows me to hand over
control of my experience to my driver in Agra, Kumar. I am a person who has to
watch my “directive” tendencies. I feel as though I am always the one who needs
to be in charge. I know what’s best. But when I travel, I am faced with the
reality that I am NOT the one in charge. During my day in Agra, Kumar was in
charge. Of course I want to see the Taj Mahal and I want to go there first. But
I realized Kumar is the expert and the course he set out for the day was
optimal and I had a great time.
Control is also coupled with trust in others. And this comes back to the issue of trusting strangers.
That two word combination juxtaposes safety and danger. But when we have to
travel, we have to do so. When in a new place, I am highly alert until I feel
that I am comfortable enough with local customs to trust the locals
(strangers). But trusting strangers is intertwined so closely with issues of
control that in many ways they become one and the same. And in travel, we are
so far out of our comfort zones that we as the quote above says, we have to
trust strangers. And so, I end with post by relaying that I had to put my trust
in a 14-year old boy from Agra, India.
Aman, who you will meet in future posts, was tasked with finding myself
and Masaru, again you’ll meet him in a future post, a taxi to the Delhi airport
because our trains had been delayed by fog by at least 4 hours with no idea of
whether to train would get us back to Delhi in time and then to the airport
itself. Masaru and I were helpless. We had to ask for help and we turned to
Aman, a 14-year old, who is wise and resourceful beyond his years and scrounged
up a friend of his father, managed to locate a vehicle that could be used and
then translated our wishes and need to the non-English speaking driver. I had
to trust Aman and in the end he came through.
We can talk about how travel makes us learn about the world,
different cultures and restore our faith in humanity. All those reasons are valid for ME but it is
the personal (experience, feelings and personal growth) that makes travel such
a valuable and indispensible part of my life.