Yet another birthday on the go, it's been nine years since I last spent one at home. Of course, it's no doubt been a fantastic privilege to be able to commemorate such milestones in different environments. But there was something even more symbolic this time round, as I spent the bulk of my 29th birthday (close to eight hours, to be precise) inside a shuttle between Honduras and Guatemala. So here are my musings, on three life lessons I somehow strive not to learn as I enter my 30th year.
Below (from top to bottom): conversations by a landslide; beautiful mountainous country between Copan Ruinas and Antigua.
1. Control! Alternate Delete.
Travelling excites me in many ways - deciding where to go, planning routes and connections, the actual visiting and then finally writing about them. Blank cheques are rare occurrences, if not fantasies, but it does feel like carte blanche looking at a map and deciding where to go. One then comes closest to being in the shoes of a campaigning general while planning routes and figuring out connections between different points of interest subsequently. The actual visiting sees the euphoria of conquest. And then the memoirs appear, on this blog (though only recently).
It all sounds too perfect. But to borrow another military axiom, no plan survives the first shots in a battle. A landslide held us up on the mountainous approach to Guatemala City. Once the debris was removed, traffic towards Guatemala City was first given the all-clear to proceed, and it took us all of five minutes to drive past a long line of waiting vehicles headed the opposite direction. It only set us back by an hour, so we were able to shrug this off. I'll be lying if I said it wouldn't put us off too, had it been ten hours. But it really shouldn't.
Below: A dusty post-landslide crossing.
The paradox is that one seems able to decide and control what in reality is a journey, both literally and figuratively and fraught with unbreachable unknown, into foreign territory. When traveling is about embracing the unpredictable, I seem to be clinging on to a ptolemaic cosmography - there is one plan, it doesn't change and we use it.
2. All-weather travelling
Have you been on the Milford Track? Mrs Tan, my ex-principal, asked me three years ago.
No, I've read that it is very beautiful, but frequently over-booked and over-regulated, was my reply. Hikers have to hurry from hut to hut, rain or shine. You can't really time the best bits when the weather is best.
Mrs Tan laughed. There are no best conditions. Any condition is best.
Below: Bulock's on a clear day - nobody buys it.
Mrs Tan and her husband saw New Zealand's best on foot when travellers her age prefer to do so on a coach. Her motherly demeanour and frugal habits hide keenness for adventure and a willingness to take the place and the weather for what they are.
I'm way behind as an all-weather traveller. Clouds I only ignore below a certain altitude - namely, when it obscures nothing. Instead, blue skies and sun seem to induce more anxiety, especially as we're making our way to the top of a hill, mountain or volcano. We got to get there before the clouds move in. And they tend to, sometime from the late morning onwards. There will be neither clear views nor good pictures left.
Mary admonishes me frequently. Don't always be so preoccupied with taking the best pictures! Sometimes the best picture is in the memory and not the memory card. And then she proposes anathema - why don't you travel without a camera?
The journey matters more than the destination, the experience more than actual attractions. I'm still learning.
I'm way behind as an all-weather traveller. Clouds I only ignore below a certain altitude - namely, when it obscures nothing. Instead, blue skies and sun seem to induce more anxiety, especially as we're making our way to the top of a hill, mountain or volcano. We got to get there before the clouds move in. And they tend to, sometime from the late morning onwards. There will be neither clear views nor good pictures left.
The journey matters more than the destination, the experience more than actual attractions. I'm still learning.
Below: Find the rainbow. And find your own. Somebody else's is a lot harder to see.
3. Comfort Zoning Out
A friend, whose frankness is the only thing that is plain about her, once told me I wrote like a white anthropologist. I didn't agree entirely, but I do agree that I travel like one sometimes. As soon as we decided on Central America, I started to learn Spanish on my own (in fact resuming an attempt from a year earlier). However grammatically unformed my Spanish ultimately became, I learnt successfully to make myself understood in the language. Therein was the flaw - I made myself understood, but only partially understood others. I remained in gringo (foreigner) shoes, because in my mind gringos were never far away, whether they were salvadoreños, guatemaltecos, hondureños o otros extranjeros.
We never got off the beaten path, to avoid both being mugged and stared at. (Ironically, one is valued in the former instance and devalued in the latter.) And we seldom turned the other cheek.
Below: transiting between comfort zones.
I've stepped across a number of international borders to get to countries which hardly figure on Conde Nast or the Sunday Times Travel, but the real question is: how much have I stepped out of my comfort zone?
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