my life in numbers.: September 2011

Just this week a few different people, after reading my blog, have asked me what it is about travelling that I like so much. I wasn't sure how to answer, which made me question what it is about travelling that I like so much, after a lot of thinking, day dreaming and indulging in enjoyable recollection of past adventures, I realised that there really is no simple answer. I also noticed that when I was asked this question it was asked, each time, in a tone that suggested that these people had never really "travelled" and had no desire to, their question was almost marred with an undertone of "why do you bother to travel". You might notice that above I wrote "travelled" with quotation marks, this is because I believe that though these people may have gone on holidays, maybe to a Bed and Breakfast in the blue mountains, maybe to a five star resort in Thailand, maybe to Bali to drink Bintang for the weekend... But that, and I know that I am risking sounding extremely self righteous here, to me, isn't travelling, that's a holiday. Travelling, to me, is not knowing exactly where you are going but knowing that you will get there, eventually, after numerous buses, sleeper trains, airplanes, ferries, speed boats, donkies, over crowded ute's, tuk tuk's and boarder-crossing-walks later, you.will.get.there...

(to me) Travelling isn't booking into a fancy hotel with room service, it's turning up on the front steps of a dirty hostel at 4am and pleading with a God your pretty sure you don't believe in, that they have a bed (or even a 'Welcome Mat') that you can curl up on for the night/week/month. It's feeling an overwhelming sense of relief when the hostel says that they have a vacancy and then go on to tell you that they also have hot water and sit-down-toilets! It's the mass-restraint you show by not climbing on top of the hostel worker and kissing their face off when they also mention that they have FREE wifi AND breakfast, because, that, my friends, is an unexplainable feeling.

I guess that one of the parts of the definition of "travelling" in my mind is coming head to head with hardships that force you to discover an unrecognisable courage that you weren't aware you possessed. I remember being somewhere in Central America and getting into a van with an un-uniformed man at 1am after arriving at the airport. I had no idea where I would sleep that night but he told me, in Spanglish, that he 'knew a place'. I sat in the back of the van and clenched my camera in my hand thinking to myself that if I was going to have to hit him for some reason, a camera was as close to a rock as I could get. I didn't take my eyes off his hands for a second. He kept leaning forward to reach for something just beyond his fingertips and all I could think was "there's a very good chance that there is a gun under his seat", so while he drove I watched him with dense concentration, I ran over and over in my head what I would do if he did pull a gun on me, (I have always had the theory that if you can work out the worst case scenario in any situation in life, and make a plan for that scenario, anything else that happens will feel a lot more manageable). In this situation it was a definite possibility, it would have been much more profitable for him to rob me than to charge me a fee and I had been in the country for less than an hour and did not yet have my bearings. I made sure that I exuded confidence, but psychologically I was preparing myself for the worst. We had been driving for an hour, down back alleys and unlit streets, he was continuously squirming in his seat and reaching for whatever was just out of reach, then he lifted his eyes to the rear vision mirror where I had been staring in an attempt to read some sort of emotion from the quarter of his face I could see, his brow lifted as he fixed his eyes on my reflection, then he yelled "We are here now!" before turning to me with a big white tooth smile... I looked to my right and saw the entrance of a hostel and exhaled for what seemed like the first time since the first back-ally-short-cut. I paid, he reached under his seat and grabbed his phone that he had obviously dropped, then carried my 20kg back pack to the door and we said our goodbye's, my 'goodbye' quickly followed with a "thanks for not murdering me" in my head.

Although the above story is not really a desirable situation to find yourself in, it is a situation I am grateful to have been in, I learn't quiet a bit about myself from that experience, I know now that if I am faced with an adverse situation that I have enough courage and resolve to at least attempt to handle it, In the decision between 'fight or flight' I am much more inclined to choose the fight strategy.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that for a real travel experience you need to be fearing for your life or safety, or that you shouldn't stay in nice hotels. for the last three days of my last trip I stayed in a pretty suave hotel in Dubai and it felt amazing to have a bath and scrub the black from my feet that had been there since my nine day stint on a black sand beach on the Guatemalan Coast three months earlier, It also felt incredible to eat in front of a T.V and sleep in a bed with Sheets. All I'm saying is that there's more to discover than the main course's listed on a room service menu.

The second component of travel that I love is people. I have drank beer with unfamiliar friends in England, I have shared fluro paint with strangers in Thailand, I have smoked Marijuana with a Ben Harper dopple-ganger in Amsterdam, I have experienced heartache for the lost generation of Cambodia, I have watched school children laugh as they played in the snow in Norway, I momentarily fell in love with a shirtless man in Brazil, I provided food for a homeless mother in Argentina, I saw a Shakira concert with an ocean of overjoyed Colombians in Bogota and I shed secret tears for a broken man in Guatemala. People are without a doubt the most important aspect of travel, if you don't pay attention to the locals, if you don't open your mind to try and understand their stories with empathy, compassion, respect, joviality or whatever other emotion is summoned, then you may as well just buy the TeeShirt and go home, because it's my belief that unless you see the people, you won't see the country. If you pay close attention these strangers are capable of teaching you more about life, their culture, their country and even yourself than you could have ever imagined, and when it comes down to it, discovery is what travelling is really all about, isn't it?

The third aspect and probably the most obvious is the scenery, Coming from Australia I could just travel in my own country forever and see a vast array of ever changing scenery, but that's what retirements for... My personal favourites have been the obvious; Machu Picchu, Thailand's beaches and Scotland, the following is an excerpt of an email I wrote home while in the middle of a road trip through England, Ireland and Scotland.

"I had never seen such beauty! The greenest grass blanketed rolling paddocks which were scattered with Jersey cows and sat on the shores of a glittering sea, while quintessential cottages wrapped in vines and skirted with white wooden fences stood humbly atop child-like mountains, the brightest yellow daffodils softened the strong rock walls that lined the curving roads and I frantically tried to paint this picture in my head as vividly as I could, afraid that I might forget it. I had never really said it out loud before, at least not with this much pride and ownership, but I heard myself say, "My Granddads from here!" and I said it with all the boastfulness of a child wanting to win the 'well, my dads a policeman!' competition."

I know of a quote by Marcel Proust that says "the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes" and it's true, I don't look at cows with a feeling of wonder every time I go and visit my Dad (No, my Dad isn't a cow!) but when I am travelling my senses are on high alert and I notice cows like I had never seen them before, I see the rust on bikes that would otherwise just be a minor detail that wouldn't even register, I feel the texture of grainy sand, I smell the Paella cooking in a strangers kitchen and perceive the cold chill of another glass of Sangria. I don't take any detail for granted, because it's always subconsciously in the back of your head that "I might never be here again".

So, to answer the question "what it is about travelling that you like so much" well, to me, travelling is all of the above and more. It's knowing that my career is not my life, it's being acutely aware that there is more to life than working nine to five and driving a shiny car, it is the unmeasurable gratitude I feel for the liberty I have to be able to 'waste' my time roaming the world in a dizzy state of wanderlust, It's the thrill and challenge of going to a market and not recognising a single vegetable, it's perfection is in it's simplicity. It's the feeling that I am doing what I am meant to be doing, a sense of satisfaction... of purpose. I get nervous when I look into the future and see that it is predictable, travel allows only a minute amount of predictability, To answer the question, all I really needed to do was read the last paragraph of the last email I sent home from my last trip, which is what I will leave you with now...

Every country I have ever been to has taught me something. From Asia to Scandinavia to the UK, to Europe to The Americas. Sometimes it is a recipe, sometimes a language, but often it is something I learn about myself, like how well I can handle sitting on a 24 person bus with 76 people for 48 hours in 40 degree heat and with 90% humidity (from Vietnam to Cambodia, and aside from almost wetting my pants, I did pretty well, turns out I am quiet patient), or how persistent I am at mastering a new skill (Norway, Snow boarding, not persistent at all, I ended up riding the snowboard down the 8km hill like a toboggan and made a snow man family for the rest of the day until the others were ready to leave), you get the idea, they usually change from country to country as they adapt to the current adventure and direct influences, but there is one lesson I have learnt in every country, it pops up time and time again like a bird from a cocoo clock, checking sporadically to make sure I am still paying attention. It comes to the front of my mind when I feel myself getting caught up in my own life and problems. It echoes and bounces off walls when I start to think that maybe it is time to save for a house deposit or a decent car instead of another overseas odyssey. It is a simple lesson but it has taken me 27 countries to be able to recognize it and hear it clearly, without all the static. It is simply…

“…knowing that there is more to the world, than the world I live in…”

Some of my travel photo's...