The Road Often Taken

Wanderlust noun

wan·​der·​lust |  \ ˈwän-dər-ˌləst \

: Strong longing for or impulse towards travel

To travel is to live.  

To travel is to escape from reality.

To travel farther is to move closer to understanding oneself.

To feel anonymous in a place you have never been to before is refreshing.

If you are in strong agreement with the last 4 lines, then whatever you are going to read further might be of very little interest to you.

With plentitudes of blogs, aeons of podcasts, exabytes of frames and bundles of literature on travel, have we not reduced it into mere hashtags of meaningless escapes, cliched roads of bikers' pride and never-ending scrolls of photographers' obsession?

Lately, I have this feeling that travel is overrated. And, 'I love to travel' is a mask! Where are we trying to escape? In fact, What are we escaping from? Jumping from one lonely Island to another? How long will it take for us to realise that what we seek is no different from what we have? To realise all this drudgery is to leap into the same abyss we are already floating in?

The so-called travel is tiresome. The aching stretch of no time and no home. The nausea associated while traversing in those confines. The dull pleasure of transforming into identity defying numbers and cards. Let me not even get started on the money and overhyped tourism business involved and being cheerily imbecile while we are drained by those expensive 'need-nots'.

Now I can sense you building arguments constructed with imagery of beautiful destinations and scrolls of history. Yes! destinations are beautiful. New places are intriguing. But are we really travelling? What good is an adventure when we rise and fall back into the same routine? What good is an escape when we ache to get into the comfort of our cages, again? Is it really a retreat when all that we are pulling out from is, love? There is this friend of mine. She often captures frames on her way back home (not in the mornings though. There she rushes like all of us), just to let us be a part of the undying gush of emotions held by her everyday scenes. No special destinations they are. No new occurrences there. But she constantly reminds me that, travel is neither measured by distance nor valued by newness. Am I adventurous enough to take a detour once in a while from my regular route? Am I gutsy enough to often reach to that 'second' tea shop and forego the comfort of the master knowing how I like my drink? Am I a wanderer enough to reap every day all the pleasures that travel has to offer? If there is anything I learnt from those little hours of travel I have been blessed with, is that Travel is not a plunge into the unknown. It is not a vinyl we would love to frame in our living room. Travel is change. Empirical. Irreversible. Constant.Together let us travel. Less wide and more deep.