travel notes

Two months of rapidly passing clouds, trees, yellow dividers. Thoughts flew, new colours surprised, the blur was welcome. Introspection? In gallons, flowing into every landscape, and entering every relived conversation. Many faces and places merge now; I credit someone’s joke to someone else, too many anecdotes put away for the right audience have now faded.
But some things, not photographed, not talked about, still linger.

The face of the man from Hyderabad who took my window seat without asking

A day slowly begun in Bangalore. Contentment rushing through my blood that cool Sunday morning by Cubbon Park.

The informed knowledge of a night blacked out in Phuket, and the balding guitarist at the bar.

A new country seen with the oldest bestest friends.

The locket worn by the Bangkok taxi driver whose name meant “a good man”. And the story of how he met his wife (she was posh hotel clerk, he was bell boy)

“I’m going to live to 120” in five languages. Said in rapid succession by the 107-year-old woman in Chennai.

The little Sikh boy trying to eat a banana while holding a sword, in a rally before Guru Nanak Jayanthi in Amritsar

The usher at Wagah Border who goaded the Indians to out-scream the Pakistanis

Walking on Valmiki beach, Chennai, hopping to avoid stepping on poo, looking for the turtles that’ll come only in February

Mushraf, photographer at Taj Mahal, who disappeared with my parents’ eternal-love photograph

Realising while talking to a friend I’d mixed up Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. Eyes shut tight in embarrassment. Followed by a desperate attempt at memorizing the India map.

The wonderfully half-read novels, abandoned to accommodate occasional staring from the window

The puncture changed in Warangal while convincing sickle-armed men claiming to be Naxalites that we meant no harm.

The search for local food in dim lit streets, and temple premises

The elation of constant motion still tickles my feet. Tired, dusty feet greedily ask for more. More people to ask directions from, more train food to be complained about, more after-mints to nibble on flights. And through cursing and hating packing and unpacking, I jog my brain for even the semblance of clarity it had when on the road.

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at time requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places. Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape.

- Alain de Botton, Art of Travel