Drive v/s Flight
Shubham Gupta

I listen to the plane passing above me. I look up, itching to get on it or for that matter any of the many planes that fly past. Alas, I have a busy schedule to follow. Yet it is tolerant enough to allow the construction of imaginary far-flung spaces I dream of (Thanks to Nolan’s Inception!).
I am reading Nicolas Bouvier’s ‘Way of the World’ courtesy of my trusted guide ‘Goodreads’. It stands out, thanks to the narrator’s distinctive destination in Khyber Pass. The author narrates his journey from Geneva to Khyber Pass in a car along with his friend Thierry Vernet.
We undertake a journey to reach a place, undermining the journey’s very essence. What pleasure would it gain on reaching an uncharted route, a journey undertaken only for the joy of travelling? Bouvier seeks an answer to this very question through his book.
As Robert Louis Stevenson said, “The greatest affair is to move”. Journey which allows for the confluence of mind and sight is the precursor to vision. It is not surprising that many social entrepreneurs are people who possess the lust, not to travel, but to undertake the journey.
What is so special about driving you may ask? A sense of motion along with the accumulation of various sensory stimuli is the basic ingredient for concocting the untasted and untested. A journey, however short, if digested slowly has more to offer than the exotic destination alone.
Through this discourse, I believe I have given myself enough reasons to stay content with a hundred km drive rather than dream of a utopian destination thousand km away.
