Lights out Alice!
Being constantly on the move comes with an obvious downside. When you have to stand still, it becomes nearly unbearable. Having travelled a lot in the past quarter as part of my job, the biggest takeaway I had was that throughout the stretch of intense travel, it mostly felt hollow with specs of good memories in between.
For example, there wasn't a standout portion of the journey to Indore, just the same old airport transfer to the hotel at midnight, a run of the mill high class hotel with fancy furniture and excess pillows, the view outside the window was below expectations and the schedule hectic.
The visit to Chappan gali where there was a lot of street food was ruined by the fact that I wasn't in the right head or stomach space and the fried food didn't appeal to me anyways.
The job that I was there for made it worse since I had no active role to play, just a standby observer at best, which added to my frustration. Moreover, the entire occasion seemed superficial, which, to be fair, is the nature of sales. But when compounded with other factors, it was becoming a bit too much for me to stomach.
Coming to the point: What I wanted to talk about when I thought of writing this blog is that I had recently gotten into an argument with SB about what it means to travel. She is currently touring USA and was excitedly recounting how the place is awesome and it has made all the difference to her recently spate of tough months she has been going through. I definitely understand and feel for her and mostly acknowledge that I should not have been the killjoy I was in the moment. I replied and argued that It wasn't the location that made the difference but the people she was sharing it with. This came from the personal observation that I had made because the different fancy locations that I have travelled solo gave me a different (mostly less, sometimes more) experience from when I have travelled with good company/people I care about versus when travelling with company I couldn't care less about.
Which also ties up pretty well with my Indore point. I didn't like the state of mind I was in, I didn't like the circumstances, but the fact that it was a place I had never visited before piqued my curiosity and ensured that I was busy soaking it all in. I liked the general atmosphere, the copious amounts of religious places, mostly because I finally got to visit the place that holds a lot of good memories for the rest of my family who had been here around a decade ago and I couldn't join them back then. More to my point, the city was nice because I had already formed a rose tinted image of it in my head because of the memories that my parents and sister had in this place. While crossing a place that I could recount from the many occasions my mother would have mentioned it, I was filled with joy and couldn't wait to call and tell them all about it.
A simple memory or a connection making an innocuous temple or a street engraved as a marvellous experience. It is all in my head I guess.
Lights out Alice!
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