Desert road,Jordan.
Why
do I travel?
What
is this burning restlessness in my soul that urges me to keep going to new
places, to keep trying to catch the horizon?
Some people never leave their cities or towns in
their lifetimes, content with the familiarity of the every day, yet, others are
driven by a compulsion to travel and
experience different places and to interact with people living in far
off lands.
When I was 12 years old I loved pouring over the
atlas and developed a love of reading stories about other people’s travel
experiences. The very first book I read ‘Tschiffely’s Ride ‘ by AF Tschiffley
had a profound effect on me. In 1925
Aime Felix Tschiffley ,set off with two Crillo ponies, Mancho and Gato, on an
epic ride from Buenos Aries to Washington
DC. This 10,000 mile ride took
him 3 years.
In June 1325, a 21 year old Berber, Muhammad Ibn
Battutah set out from Tangier in Morocco
on a Haj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, a
16 month journey. He finally returned to Tangier nearly 30 years later. He
travelled to Egypt, Yemen, Somalia. the East African Coast,
Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Anatolia, Persia, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, the
Maldives, China, Crimea, Moldova. Romania,
Bulgaria, Mali
and Timbuktu.
Along the way he married several times and made and lost several fortunes. A remarkable journey given the times he lived
in!
Irishwoman, Dervla Murphy, on her tenth birthday,
was presented with an atlas and a bicycle. A few days later she decided, with
great confidence to cycle to India. She kept her ambition to herself, and in
1963, at the age of twenty two set off on a bicycle she named Roz, from Dunkirk to Delhi,
India. She took
with her : a change of clothing, some toiletries, bicycle spares, a small
medical kit, two books and a pistol! (Which she had occasion to use ,twice!)
I live in very different times compared with Ibn Battutah,
AF Tschiffely and Dervla Murphy, so why do I travel?
Growing up in small mining towns in Zimbabwe,
was pretty boring, so to meet someone who came from another country was exciting.
I couldn’t wait to visit these places. Like Dervla Murphy, I had to wait for
years and years before this to become a reality!
I love arriving in a new place, the joy of
unexpected discoveries, chance encounters with strangers who offer words of wisdom,
make you laugh or drive you nuts. The kindness of locals like the Egyptian
shopkeeper who always made sure that I kept my money filed in numerical order
so that I wouldn’t get swindled by unscrupulous people. Drinking tea with my
Turkish hostess and enjoying a meal with villagers in Nepal. Shy
schoolgirls in India, who greet me in
English.
So tell me, why do you travel?
No comments:
Post a Comment