I made a list of my travelling this year. and though I knew it was a fair amount, I did not realize it was this incessant.
A friend balked when he saw this. He's a homebody, and faces near-death conditions when he is asked to travel from office to (say) Salt Lake, 10 kilometers away. But even otherwise the travelling was a fair bit. Here's the broad overview. And remember December has still a distance to go.
January 2025
1st to 4th - Bombay
15th to 18th - Indore
22nd to 23rd - Chennai
February 2025
1st to 10th - Hyderabad - Lucknow - Bangalore
21st to 22nd - Bombay
March 2025
15th to 17th - Bombay
April 2025
4th to 6th - Banaras
12th to 14th - Hyderabad
May 2025
16th to 25th - Kalimpong - Pelling
June 2025
20th to 21st - Bombay
July 2025
12th to 14th - Ahmedabad
Aug 2025
13th to 18th - Delhi
September & October 2025
26th Sept to 14th Oct - Spain
18th to 20th Oct - Mumbai - Nagpur
November 2025
22nd to 25th - Delhi - Bhubaneshwar - Puri - Delhi
30th Nov to 1st Dec - Bombay
December 2025
6th to 7th - Delhi
16th to 18th - Bombay
22nd to 24th - Delhi
The irony of all this is the real fact that I'm a homebody. Give me a comfortable chair, a book, the means to see a film, and a way to keep writing - well, all's well with the world.
But of course that's not possible at all. I'm thrown into the cauldron of the world everyday. Ten am onwards it's just people. Meetings, wisecracks, coffee breaks, zoom calls - the engine of commerce is conversation. And I love that too. The energy of it, the way we resolve situations, the chance to help people, the opportunity to laugh. To get to know people is an unravelling, a journey, a mystery solved. It's just that I like to do all of this on my terms, which alas is not always possible. And that's stressful. But then that's the way the dice falls.
So. Travelling with people who like travelling like I do, is important. I don't mind waking up early. I don't mind doing doing 30000 steps a day. And I don't mind spending half a day in a park, watching swans sail by, ducks waddle in, or letting the sun embrace me as I read a book.
I am slightly didactic in setting the tone of traveling compulsions - if you want to travel with me, sorry buddy, you need to do it on my terms.
That's why I'm happiest when I travel alone.
And then there's this other thing about travelling. People hate airports. And I love them. Even tacky ones like Calcutta and rubbish ones like New York or the svelte ones like Singapore or soulless ones like London. Even within the commoditisation of interiors and the shopping arcades, airports are tiny representations of the city they are arcades to. Las Vegas has slot machines, Changi has butterfly gardens, Doha has a giant teddy bear lamp, Munich has a beer garden, Bombay has the biggest art gallery in the world - all of which compensates for the dirtiest wash rooms possible which I encounter in Calcutta every time I fly out.
And then there's the delicious suspense of lounges. What will it offer? Would it have character? Would it have baths? Massages? Mediterranean food? Would it, well, compare to Dubai's Emirates Business Lounge? Apart from the sense of uppity-ness a classy lounge provides, it is also a great way to charge phones and replenish hunger, thirst, souls. But the ones which open themselves to everyone with a slightly-entitled credit card are traffic-zones rather than relaxation zones. But the good ones are a privilege to spend the interim two or three hours between flights.
And then one goes up in the air.
And it's like life opens up with all its possibility for those few (or many!) hours! I ensure I am completely spoilt for choice. At least three books ready to jump into (tick), films available on Netflix, Prime AND Hotstar (tick), favourite music playlists downloaded (ticked), Evernote always there (tick!). Now let the bloody aircraft never land, a la the ship at the end of Love in the Time of Cholera!
These are the rare occasions when I get to sit without agenda, the journey an enforced luxury, where I have the choice to do any or all of my favourite things. Even conversations with companions, if indulged in, are surprisingly intimate, the closeness engendering a relaxed meandering into entire landscapes of lived experiences.
Destinations, then, come with their own set of compulsions, and a déjà vu of what you left behind, unless it’s a holiday to a new place. It's life coming back to earth, literally and figuratively.
The important thing about travel is mindfulness. To let the moment determine the direction. For the journey is the end. And is a beginning of everything I love about life.
I wrote on these cities I dearly love - Venice, Washington, Calcutta, New York.
Read, maybe?
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