A pristine morning in Interlaken, Switzerland
As I was growing up, I noted that there were some ‘personality descriptors’ often used for the admirable and exemplary – ‘humble’, ‘accomplished’, ‘visionary’, the like and among them the phrases ‘well read’ and ‘well traveled’. Traveling and reading seemed to be at the core of expanding your mental horizons, strengthening your thought processes and becoming better informed individuals. This post is an attempt to describe why I find traveling addictive and in specific, why I love to travel alone. Like every other passion, I’m sharing it in the hope that one of you will decide to discover the sheer joy that is travel and pass it on.
Why travel? In simple words, to learn and explore. In our formative years we are exposed to a subset of what the world is about – the ways of life, how people think. To learn how the rest of the world operates and also how it did in the millennia before our age, some of the best ways to see for yourself are to read and travel. But for most experiences, no words, no pictures can do justice to being in the moment. There are things you just have to experience for yourself. Traveling is tremendously liberating – to walk on foreign streets where you don’t speak the language, with only a map in hand to get lost in the streets. There is nothing that compares to feeling inconsequential in front of the towering Alps or the Himalayas, being overwhelmed at walking the same path a great emperor once took back to his capital upon victory, being marveled by feats of human engineering and architecture or just simply sharing a bite with a roadside bread seller. Traveling teaches you tolerance and respect for the myriad beliefs, customs and practices there exist in the world. It equips you with analogies and incidences to build stronger frameworks of understanding. It puts you in situations you might never have imagined and it shows you some of nature’s infinite moods and creations.
Why travel alone? Traveling alone helps me concentrate and absorb the minutiae – the sights, sounds and smells of a new place. If I’m with a friend, we might be having conversations that we would’ve otherwise had over coffee and that, for me, subtracts from the experience. Also, when you travel alone, you are the one who calls the shots to everything. Your plan for the day, your food, your sleep, who to talk to, which street to walk on, when to leave, how to get there, everything. If something fails, you have no one else to blame and when things work out, you feel ecstatic. I love the feeling that time is mine and that I am not dependent on anyone. I have no obligations to be anywhere and can choose to linger on somewhere as long as I’d like to. Conversations with strangers are unprejudiced and carefree. They are often perspectives you would never have considered, things you might never have heard about. And sometimes, you keep in touch with a stranger you perhaps explored the ruins of Pompeii with, and become friends for life.
You want to get lost too, don’t you? :)
In a lot of ways, if you’re around people who don’t know you, you have lesser inhibitions of trying out new things. It’s a free pass to being yourself, without restraint or fear of being judged. Then again, they say that if you can find someone you want to share your travels with, that person could be your partner for life. I’m not there yet, but I still feel that I would like to travel alone for as long as I possibly can. It’s a very personal experience that I treasure immensely.
Life is a journey in which the more you learn, the more context you have for newer information and the more things make sense. It’s the sum total of uncountable little experiences, accumulated one at a time. Being ‘well read and well traveled’ doesn’t happen overnight, it’s always work in progress. While the rest of the ‘personality descriptors’ are outcomes of your decisions and the kind of person you choose to be, something all of these gain from is travel. And travel starts when you want it to start. Traveling need not involve the most elaborate plan and it need not include the headache of coordinating with a bunch of friends. It can be as simple as booking a train or flight and taking off for the weekend.
Life is short. Make the moments count
Also Read : Reasons to Travel Solo