Most folks don’t tell you this but travel is pretty hard to do. Sure you have seen pictures of people relaxing on a beach, or even canoodling that gorgeous guy/girl with a delicious looking cocktail, getting an enviable tan doing simply nothing. Or excitedly checking out the must visit places and posing at every place worth checking out with a delirious grin plastered on their faces. And getting those couple lovey dovey typical poses in front of important monuments are pretty much de rigeur.
We are all urged to travel. By magazines, travel agents, friends, books, relatives, neighbours…… the whole lot. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE to travel. But am simply fed up with the idea of travel being this serene zen like experience, and you come back having aligned your chakras and balanced your yin with the yang and looking like a million bucks or more. I am sure it must be that way for some people at least, but for the regular Joes and Janes of the world, that is seldom how it is.
Middle class families know the value of a good vacation. Intense research goes into it: guidebooks, travel magazines, friends and family, travel forums, zillion websites.......... at which point you are exhausted even before you take that first step out of the house to get to that blessed place. And why shouldn't you be tired? You have had to first zero in on one particular destination from a list of many worthwhile locations, you have had to navigate the visa roadblocks, you need to settle on a budget, decide the optimal balance between how many days you need to see a country and how many days you can realistically take off from your real life, which hotel would be good enough to suit every member of the travelling party, how will you allocate your trip, which places are a must and which can you sacrifice,.......... decisions, decisions, decisions.
So, if you are a control freak like me, then on the day of the actual trip, you will feel some level of reluctance before you travel. You wonder if it's worth the hassle. You are already too tired to enjoy yourself. You curse the whole pantheon of gods in the universe. You may not even much like your companions at this point in time.
And then, you reach that place. And you are blown away by what you see. And you figure that all your hard work was worth it. But there is a nagging feeling at the back of your brain. It's so beautiful. Can I see it all in the few days that I am here? What if I can never again make it back here? What if this is my only chance to see it all? Doesn't God help those who help themselves? So what if I have to sacrifice sleep in order to see it all and do it all. Sleep is over rated anyway. And especially rest. What good could possibly come of rest? I don't know about you, but I certainly have never heard anyone of any consequence say that sleep and rest are essential to their lives. Doctors be damned.
At the end of the vacation, I have sallow, dull skin, lacklustre hair, elusive fantasies of sleep, aching feet, a list of crossed out items of things to do and places to see, and a memory card or two filled with pictures. It would be safe to say I am tired. And that I need another vacation to recuperate from this one!
We are all urged to travel. By magazines, travel agents, friends, books, relatives, neighbours…… the whole lot. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE to travel. But am simply fed up with the idea of travel being this serene zen like experience, and you come back having aligned your chakras and balanced your yin with the yang and looking like a million bucks or more. I am sure it must be that way for some people at least, but for the regular Joes and Janes of the world, that is seldom how it is.
Middle class families know the value of a good vacation. Intense research goes into it: guidebooks, travel magazines, friends and family, travel forums, zillion websites.......... at which point you are exhausted even before you take that first step out of the house to get to that blessed place. And why shouldn't you be tired? You have had to first zero in on one particular destination from a list of many worthwhile locations, you have had to navigate the visa roadblocks, you need to settle on a budget, decide the optimal balance between how many days you need to see a country and how many days you can realistically take off from your real life, which hotel would be good enough to suit every member of the travelling party, how will you allocate your trip, which places are a must and which can you sacrifice,.......... decisions, decisions, decisions.
So, if you are a control freak like me, then on the day of the actual trip, you will feel some level of reluctance before you travel. You wonder if it's worth the hassle. You are already too tired to enjoy yourself. You curse the whole pantheon of gods in the universe. You may not even much like your companions at this point in time.
And then, you reach that place. And you are blown away by what you see. And you figure that all your hard work was worth it. But there is a nagging feeling at the back of your brain. It's so beautiful. Can I see it all in the few days that I am here? What if I can never again make it back here? What if this is my only chance to see it all? Doesn't God help those who help themselves? So what if I have to sacrifice sleep in order to see it all and do it all. Sleep is over rated anyway. And especially rest. What good could possibly come of rest? I don't know about you, but I certainly have never heard anyone of any consequence say that sleep and rest are essential to their lives. Doctors be damned.
At the end of the vacation, I have sallow, dull skin, lacklustre hair, elusive fantasies of sleep, aching feet, a list of crossed out items of things to do and places to see, and a memory card or two filled with pictures. It would be safe to say I am tired. And that I need another vacation to recuperate from this one!
