A Blip that is Travel
I always have mixed feelings about travel.
People seem to travel all the time. On social media, at least. Sunny landscapes, crystal clear waters, exotic architecture — FB status messages that turn one green to an extent that is inversely proportional to the greenery one is presently esconced in. Travel makes one cool. The more unheard of a destination, the higher the cool quotient. One is ‘with it’, when one travels.
By travel, I do not mean the work trips. No, those don’t make me jealous. Travelling for work is rarely ‘travel’ — it is simply a longer work day masquerading as one. An occasional drink with an old friend may salvage a work trip, but it usually is a flurry of meetings and calls and meals-on-the-go.
I would grudgingly exclude trips to see relatives from my ideal travel list too. Oh, don’t brand me asocial yet. I love my family. I love wedding trips brimming with cousins and uncles and aunts, or the ones back ‘home’ with tons of nostalgia and full of parental advice about eating right and working less. But such trips have too much of an agenda to fall in the bracket of ‘footloose’ ones.
Travel in my book is travel for travel sake. The kinds to a destination yet unseen, a language yet cryptic, a culture yet unfathomable. The icing on the cake would be a locale mixed with some architecture long cherished. You know, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ types. The stuff dreams are made of, in short.
But, back to the mixed feelings. Not for me, the high ratings on the Cool Quotient of travel. Not for me, the throw-everything-to-the-wind carefree travelhood. Travel, for a lesser mortal aka parent like me, is a project.
Or a questionnaire.
Solo/ multiple? India/ abroad? Backpack/ luxury/ somewhere in-between? Friends/ family? With child/ without child? So many questions beg for answers, each one opening doors to several possibilities. And we haven’t yet got talking on tickets, accommodation, dates, deals…
Dates are a function of school breaks, and praying that the spouse won’t face a last minute SOS at work. The lone traveller of a sibling, who is turning out to be our unofficial tour planner, goes through much angst on the yo-yoing and mood swings on the itinerary. After much back-and-forth, destination is zeroed in and tickets booked (The frequent flyer spouse deliberates, “Did we use those free miles? Is there lounge access on this airline?”), accommodation blocked (“Did the Airbnb host accept our booking? Was the deal cheaper online , or over the phone directly with the hotel?”), and itinerary planned, often by the almost-a-travel-agent sibling (“Should we see the rhinos over two days, or three? Or go off to see the dolphins on one afternoon? Trekking with the brat? Rafting?”). The one thing that we smooth-sail through is packing. Even the brat is a pro, leave alone the seasoned spouse who pulls packing off in a matter of minutes.
If we are lucky, we still have a fortnight or so to go once all these boxes are checked off. Then begins the pre- and post-travel stress at work. A 7-day trip calls for planning and delegating a fortnight before and catching up for a week after. The bliss on Instagram seems just a blip in between.
And what a blip it turns out to be. A blip that mutates into a spaceship called travel, where we leave behind the world-as-we-know-it. The world that stops rotating, halts in its tracks, disappears into oblivion till this blip lasts.
The days are filled with nothings. Gawking at 4-legged creatures, delighting in their eating, grunting, and heck, even peeing. Gazing at constellations on clear, starry nights in the wilderness. Trudging through mountain trails, over streams in rickety cable bridges. Crossing river on a barge, or a boat. Listening to bird calls in silent, sprawling grasslands. Sitting for hours on end in anticipation for the mighty tiger to step out of the grass. Doodling cryptic sketches for the Pictionary. Decoding gesticulation for Dumb Charades. Watching a Mising woman weave a garment, and the children chase the chicken.
We all are better versions of our selves in this nothingness. The child eats everything on his plate, and wakes up at 3:45 am without (almost!) a grumble for that elephant ride. The grown-ups reach out for the phone only for the pictures, all other forms of screen blissfully forgotten. The only bickering is who shall go for that shower earlier, on the frosty mornings with icicles in the fields outside.
And then it’s time, always feeling like it came too early, to get back to the world — grudgingly, holding on to the last few hours slipping by, gathering mementos for the loved ones back home.
The blip passes. The chores at home and work crawl back into one’s daily existence. The slew of catch-up mails and appointments, the to-do lists assert themselves. And ah, that slight musty smell of a locked up house, the laundry pile, the fridge waiting to be restocked and the last run-up to the holiday homework ensure one hits the ground running.
Yet that blip becomes part of one’s fabric, in stories retold, in the smells and memories that assert unexpectedly in freshly-cut grass or a stray star spotted, adding a layer of empathy and experience to our existence. Over the years, the pictures pop up on the FB timeline, making us happy and amused and wistful at the same time. These blips are the wealth we collect, the little gems we add to our minds and our lives, the threads that tie us to each other just a little closer.
And I wait and plan, for the next time I get hit by mixed feelings.
