Why I Travel

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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.