Being a traveler and not a tourist, I have always enjoyed the journeys more than the destinations. Be it a holiday or life. From all such journeys, I have realized one thing: there are two ways to travel. One is a planned one, where you plan everything right from the color and size of the bag, number of clothes to carry to the name of the hotel, length of stay and destination points to be covered. Second, is an unplanned travel, where you roughly know where do you want to go (which is again subject to change), and that's it! Nothing else is planned and every action is taken on impulse. In all these years, despite all resistances and disagreements, I have sheltered a strong belief and unchangeable thought in my mind that playing safe is boring. Risks and adventures make life interesting and worth living. Sounds crazy? Well, it is. And the crazier it sounds, more is the fun involved.
Let me share two examples with you. Two real life examples. One of my ex-colleagues Sudhir (name changed) was very well known in our organization for his systematic and perfect planning. Be it a corporate party, a small lunch among friends, a family trip or even a Friday ‘after-work-booze-party’, he used to plan them all. And when I use the word “plan” in context of Sudhir, it’s not even close to your extent of definition or imagination. I cannot resist the temptation to share one such experience with him. One day I was fighting hard with the post- lunch-nap, which kept alluring me and was making it almost impossible to keep my eyelids apart. Suddenly, a piece of paper flew in to my workstation from the Xerox machine, which was close to my seat. As I started to read on, the very same eyelids not just forgot to blink, but also sent a message to my brains that left my mouth opened. The paper contained a check-list. Usually we’ve all seen or prepared check-lists before planning a trip. This too was a check-list for a trip. But the contents of this one were no less than a list prepared before shifting a house...or may be a going to live in another country...or probably leaving your parents’ house to live with your husband! Can’t figure out what all it had, right? Let me help you.
It was a list with some ten columns or so. Each column had a heading, and even sub-headings. The main headings included “food & beverages”, “Bags & Suitcases”, “Clothes”, “Shoes”, “Important accessories”, “Cosmetics”, “Toiletries” and “Miscellaneous”. Each column not only had the names but also the quantity, colour, pattern, style and every other possible extensions you can imagine. Now, food, clothes and toiletries are something I can understand to some extent, but shoes? I can’t remember when did I carry more than two pairs of shoes (including floaters or bathroom slippers) in any of the trips of my life so far. Then cosmetics? Why anyone would make a list of his wife’s/girlfriend’s cosmetics or make-up while going on a holiday? To add to this, the important accessories consisted of torch, batteries, repellants, medicines etc. that we all carry. But, it also had needle and thread (imagine you or your wife/girlfriend trying hard to stitch up that little hole in your T-shirt’s sleeve while trekking through a forest!), scissors (hope not when he travels in a flight), shoe polish and brush (why at all carry formal shoes on a holiday, eh); safety pins (have no idea why he can’t do without them ever)...and the list really goes long. Ironically, this is not the end, my friend. All clothes, shoes and bags had their specific descriptions written.
After getting over with my reaction to this legendary trip-list, I went up to Sudhir. As I handed him the sheet, I could not help asking him whether he really followed all of this. Quite surprised to my ‘stupid’ question, he proudly said, “Of course! You know Alaka, I don’t like buying stuffs around when I go on a trip. You just ask for a thing, and it comes out right from my bag! Just when you need it! Ha ha ahaaha!”. So I join him in his laughter with an appreciative expression on my face (or so I tried to). At night while I was scribbling something in my diary, I looked at my huge red travel bag lying above the cupboard. I wondered, “there are people who love to carry their worlds along wherever they go. And there are people too, who just carry themselves and their spirits along wherever they travel”. Thinking about the latter, it reminded me of a friend who, has always acted as a catalyst to my and Dev’s travel cravings!
His name is Ajit. But we would rather love to call him a Globe-trotter! Because that’s how he can be defined best. Used to work as a team lead in the IT application support in a multi national bank. That is his professional outlook. Or should I say, that was. He left his job and eloped to Europe just like that! After a few months of hopscotching, he is now teaching English in some school in Spain! Now, that is another side of Ajit. Besides being unpredictably adventurous, he is an extremely gifted photographer and an avid traveler. His quest to explore every possible nook of the earth took him to the most exotic, virgin, populated, fascinating, infamous, enticing and colourful places on globe. He would not travel without prior research about the place though, as he always used his knowledge as shield to ignorance. We too travelled a couple of times with him and could easily make a difference between a traveler and a trotter! He wanders through the scantiest and the maze-like streets with such confidence that would give any of the spectators an impression as if he grew up there. I even asked him once while following the way he kept walking, “have you been here before?” and he shrugged in a very matter of fact manner, “nope! Why do you ask?”
This is what fascinates me. Not that I’m against the tradition of planning and packing before any venture. However, I simply do not want to miss any little possibility of adventure that can come in way. Ajit would always surprise us with his sudden decisions of going on short weekend trips which would not give us time to plan ‘what to take’s or ‘how to go’s. Neither did it require any prior notice/permission/application as it utilized our ‘weekends!’. Yet, we enjoyed them. We kept waiting for such ‘break-free’s. Many times, we never got the tickets, or found most of the hotels packed already. And there started our hunts, searches, explorations and discoveries. Finding out the unavailable, managing with the unmanageable and flying free beyond the boundaries-those are the true zeal of life. Real fun. Ok, let me ask you a question. Which is more desirable? To find a perfectly clean and decorated room in a lavish hill resort booked for you-or, living in a wood house at a hill top with the local farmers and going to the fields/jungles with them to see how they work every day? Well, a tough question I believe. However, the answer is very simple to me!
