Why Travel

Why Travel?
June/2013

As soon as we got our US passport Johnny and I started traveling even before we could afford it. We were also independent travelers, carving together itineraries from scratch and exploring our destination on our own. It’s amazing that we were able to do this before the era of Google, Kayak and Hotels.com.  Danger, theft, or being swindled or mugged or facing terroristic threats were not of concern to us then. We went to see the sites and the museums, but after touring a few palaces and cathedrals, we got the idea about these places and their role in history, and we opted to spend most of our time discovering the nooks and cranny of the land or the city and imagining what’s it like to live there. So we’d hang out in public places and allow ourselves to be open to meet locals. I’d say it was more fun when I traveled with Johnny because he was more adventurous, more spontaneous, more approachable, and having skills physically that I did not possess, he could think of more exciting possibilities, and he was a man, so we had access to places that women may not necessarily be welcomed. When we were in France, in NIce, he thought it would be great to drive to Monaco, so we rented an open roadster, a stick shift, and zipped on the Grand Corniche at breakneck speed, high on the exhilaration of adventure and without a care. While on a cruise of the Greek Islands, we rented a scooter in Rhodes, and toting a picnic bag, we drove away from the bustle of the tourist areas, and explored the beaches and bays and unnamed fishing villages along the coast, and settled on a secluded cove to lay out our picnic and make love.

After Johnny died, I continued to travel, and people always ask, who I traveled with and many find it incomprehensible that I travel alone. Most inquiries are from women. I suppose men do not find it unusual to travel alone, they do it all the time. I haven’t given it a thought at all. Since I live alone, it’s logical to me that I travel alone. These reactions however have led me to ponder the question, why do I travel? and what’s contained further in women’s reactions to my traveling alone.

I see traveling and going on a vacation trip as separate. I prefer to travel alone, but I go on vacation trips with friends. Vacation trips are to the beach, to golf holidays, to do theater and sport events, to celebrate holidays and life milestones, or attend festivals. I love the company of friends around these mutual activities. I’m thinking that inquisitors who suggest that it must be lonesome to travel alone, are referring to taking vacation trips, and they need not pity me. I began to differentiate traveling from taking trips when I found out that I could not travel with another person the way I had traveled with Johnny, and it had nothing to do with the fact that we were married.

Traveling is like beauty, it is in the eyes of the beholder. It’s joys are subjective and must meet a match with another, or be understood with empathy, in order for it to be shared, and to fulfill its promise of wonder and life’s enrichment.

I was reading before I entered first grade, that was the beginning of my wanderlust. There were other lands beyond the languid coconut lined beaches and nipa huts of my youth. When my father went to work for foreign owned companies in the lumber and mining industries, my awareness about a bigger world  grew. My mother opened that world concretely by taking us on trips to Naga, the provincial city and then to Manila, the big, bustling alien metropolis, where she took us to see, the awesome movie, Ten Commandments, and to the big Circus, with exotic animals and performers from the other side of the world. We took the train on these trips, there were no commercial flights then, and we paid 3rd class fares.The trip took the entire day or overnight. We sat among sacks of rice and bananas, and crates of chickens, and bought food from food vendors on train stops. I love trains, they promise something wonderful at the end of the line.

 My father’s employer was an American company  doing business with a Japanese company, and Japanese ships docked regularly to load the harvest of iron ore to Japan. We were privileged to visit the ship and I still feel the excitement of being transported in fantasy to that mysterious land. Every Christmas we would receive a basket of persimmons, ham, oranges, grapes and apples from Japan. When my father went on a business trip to Japan for the first time, he came home loaded with unbelievable luxurious presents we’ve never seen before, Mikimoto pearls and Diorissimo perfume, Imari porcelain tea set, silks, canisters of exotic teas, and compelling stories that never left their excitement with me. We lived in communities established by the company for the workers, and as my father was in the senior management ranks, we mingled with foreigners, and met their children who spent summers with their parents. The rest of the year they were in school in the states. They regaled us with descriptions of a land with snow, and wheat fields, and lakes as big as oceans. When we were invited to their homes, they ate different foods, and many of their ways were different. They had Santa Claus who brought gifts at christmas, whereas we had the Three Kings fill our stockings with candies on the Epiphany. When in high school, I learned in world history, of the ancient lands of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Baghdad, Persia, Jordan, Anatolia, Istanbul, and rolled the names of Tierra del Fuego, Scheherazade, Sulaiman, in my tongue, I was hooked. One day I will visit and see for myself all these lands, and see the world.

For me traveling is experiencing this wonder and awe and discovering something new and different from my world and enlarging my world in the process. Discovery is a uniquely personal and solitary experience. In group travel one eats catered meals or at recommended restaurants,  one is cautioned from eating food from local vendors fearing contamination, one is led to familiar entertainment, to shop the same goods, hotels are selected to be as similar as possible to what’s one is accustomed to, and private transportation is provided, and everyone gets more or less similar experiences from these trips.

The journey towards the destination provides the main excitement of travel for me. I prepare for this journey by reading and research. I’m interested in knowing some history, the culture, the people, the food, the beliefs, the lifestyle, how ordinary people move around, earn their living, the social classes, what’s important in living, how they define happiness? I use public transportation, go to local restaurants, eat street food, find out the local entertainment, walk or hire local guides to see cultural sites, explore the local market and shops, chat with people, and if I get lucky I connect and make new friends.

I’ve made friends from unexpected quarters traveling alone, which I’m positive would not have been possible otherwise. I had a friend I knew from youth in Sydney, who introduced me to a friend, and from there new friends were made exponentially as I met their friends. I ended up staying in their homes in Port Douglas and Melbourne and one became a travel companion to Tasmania. In Munich I was about to have dinner alone in a small out of tourist way neighborhood restaurant, when a woman asked permission to join me and we talked until the restaurant closed. She invited me for lunch in her home then introduced me to her family, took me to a concert in a palace where her niece is the solo flutist, and met her 80-year old mother who is a poet. She gave me a poem in German which I had translated to English by a friend when I returned home and sent the translation to her. It made her mother very happy. She paints and knew the Brucke expressionists and told me about this wonderful museum, the Buchheim, one hour by train outside of Munich which I would not have known about otherwise. I had an authentic experience of the Passover in Kissufim, a kibbutz in Israel, when a friend I met in Spain invited me. On this trip to Israel I met a couple from Brisbane who invited me to their home when I traveled to Australia. In Bogota, I met a gay couple who informed me about programs in a Senior center they go to in Atlanta, and I’ve been taking classes in Spanish and painting there since. They’ve invited me to their home and also gave me access to the flowers and produce from their garden. Now, they have moved to live in Mexico, I have friends I can visit there.

Some consider traveling without a complete itinerary the hard way, or the scary way. I’m often asked, aren’t you afraid? They consider me very brave to travel alone, especially for a woman! What if you get lost? I never get lost, I just take a different route :). On the first day of walking the 800 km Camino Santiago de Compostela I took a different route from the French Pyrenees on my way to Roncesvalles, in the Spanish Pyrenees. It was a 4-hour deviation, and since it was getting dark in the mountains, I decided to call for help. I wasn’t afraid. If help didn’t come before dark I had a plan. I would retrace my steps to where I deviated, but I will wait for the morning for it would be dangerous to walk the mountains in the dark, with its cliffs and steep grade and unmarked pathways, and I’m exhausted after walking 8 hours with a 20-lb load on my back.  I had a sleeping bag, I had water and leftover sandwich from lunch, and I knew there would not be predators in the mountain, as no man had crossed my path all day. But help did arrive, the wonder of cell phones, I could speak some Spanish, and since I didn’t know where I was, I was fortunate to stop in this unique landscape, which my correspondent was able to identify from my description, and she prepared to send the fire truck to pick me up, but I suggested a taxi would be a better option, and instead of camping in the wilds, I had a comfortable bed and fine meal  that night, and an adventure that I can recount to my great grandchildren one day.

Did you meet somebody? I am asked too often. Women’s heads are filled with fantasies about a  dashing Romeo rescuing a damsel pining in loneliness. They pity a woman who has no man, like she’s no longer having a life. But I believe they are also sincerely excited and will be happy for me if I fulfill that fantasy, it validates what’s important in their life.

But that’s it, a fantasy. I admit I want to fall in love again, but my experience with Johnny is a hard act to follow. He was my first love, and I was knocked off my feet when I first saw him, and literally there was a tunnel of light between us eclipsing all those around us when we met. The first experience can never be repeated. I will have to come around to another idea of being with a man, for my life is full and free and unfettered by compromises. It’s not companionship I need, I can have a dog for that, it’s not financial security, I have a healthy 401K, it’s not for being lonely, I have family and friends who love me, it’s not for sex, it is overrated (I do not make unfounded conclusions :), it’s not for being afraid to be old, or of death, for those you face alone. Like travel, it has to fill me with wonder and discovery, enrich my life and expand my world.

PRISM, etc.

Musings on US431

Road Trip to Santa Rosa Beach

It always amazes me how an unfocused mind can go in all directions. On the way to Santa Rosa Beach FL , after Eufaula AL, where your eyes delight in its main street lined with charming Victorian cottages and mansions,  there isn't much to see on the road except a long  unrelieved stretch of McAdam concrete, I find my mind wandering along with the boring scenery. This wandering thoughts also occur during my enforced 3-mile walks around Atlantic Station and the GA Tech campus. The walks however had been productive of creative ideas when I am involved with projects like fundraising or planning a trip or a party, or when I have some problem to analyze and solve. I am thinking that this same  process  is applicable to a mind plotting horrible acts of terror, criminal activities or reckless behavior during idle moments when there is nothing exciting to focus on. And so while driving on this long boring stretch of road I am mulling over this US government surveillance program expose by the Guardian and  Snowden that's all over the news and the Comedy Central show with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert last night. The media and Fox news are in a tizzy and having almost orgasmic excitement about this most recent scandal in the Obama administration. JayJay is driving and I am listening to Mack update us on the progress of the tennis semifinals match at Roland Garros between Nadal and the Djoker. Rah is hooked to her iPod and periodically annoys Mack and there is a brief good natured poking between the 2 in the rear of the car, and my thoughts are held up temporarily. It appears the cyber surveillance is approved by Congress and the Justice department during the Bush years, designed to hunt down terrorists after the 9/11 attack, continued by Obama, and said to be successful in thwarting several terroristic plots. And Snowden exposed this whole plan by publishing the powerpoint data about this program, code name PRISM. This involves  monitoring any citizen through sophisticated analysis of huge amounts of data from internet sites such as  Google Facebook YouTube Yahoo etc. essentially prying into each and every citizen business without its consent or knowledge. This came in the recent revelation of the administration also seizing the emails of AP correspondents after the leak of security information after the Boston shooting. The ACLU is now suing the government for breach of free speech and unlawful surveillance.  It is very gray. On the one hand I recall the witch hunt for communists during the McCarthy era and the paranoia that's connected with Edgar Hoover's term in the early days of the FBI. Meanwhile there was the endangerment of government secret agents with the blowing of their covers in the Valerie Plame case, compromising their mission and ending Valerie’s career as a CIA agent. And now I just learned how tiny Estonia is all cyber connected, and does its governing pretty much through the internet, and the citizenry carry their ID in computer chips, pay their parking via smart phones, etc. Mind boggling, efficient, requires less government employees, therefore financially sustainable, but also vulnerable to cyber attacks and the whole system is paralyzed. This is like an apocalyptic scenario from a FX movie. This cyber technology and  communication the internet and social media is just awesome. The PRISM technology is incredible. As I’m in the car and could not type much on my iPhone to put my musings down, I am dictating using my Dragon app, then I will send it to myself via email, save it to my Pages app, then edit and finalize the whole article when I get to my desktop. I use Facebook for the facility and convenience of exchanging information and sharing in the activities of friends and family . Is there infringement of citizens’ rights if the government monitors patterns of activities analyzed from terrorist patterns to identify individuals for surveillance, to protect the nation? Do journalists violate national interests by publicizing classified information? How is that different from providing national secret to enemies, which is treason? Are journalist in it to inform the public, and how do they decide what’s good for the public to know, or are they seeking the Pulitzer or Peabody? or increasing circulation and prestige for their papers? I wish I could consult Solomon to resolve this dilemma.

So here’s Mack to update us that the Djoker lost to Nadal, and he’s not amused, and we’re making the turn to Calypso Pointe, in Santa Rosa beach, and it’s sunny and the warm Gulf is beckoning.