My Travel Goals
What I am really yearning for now is international travel.
After the freedom to travel has been taken away for a time due to the Corona Virus Lockdowns it makes it easier to become aware of how important this simple and attainable activity is to my happiness.
There are so many places that I still ache to visit.
Japan is up there, a return to the sub-continent of India, Bali … of course, as it will be our base. Georgie covets Europe and I must admit that if we choose the lesser visited Eastern European countries I’m on board for that as well.
What I’m after is the experience of unfamiliar places, getting lost and finding my way back home, not being able to understand the words that I hear in the air around me, being a voyeur and watching people from different races and cultures going about the mundane actions of everyday life, stretching my imagination about what I am willing to eat and drink … smells wafting through the air, exotic pungent smells which might be a mix of local herbs, incense and human waste, who knows. As long as they don’t smell like home.
Sounds … syncopation, unfamiliar beats and scales, new tones sometimes dissonant but still, making me reach aurally to understand their newness, even the cacophonic sound of anarchistic yet somehow ordered traffic.
Feelings … I wonder what the lives of the people who will remain when I leave to go home will be like. What it is like being a child growing up in this unfamiliar place. Exhilaration and joy due to the discovery of new experiences and sensations. Sadness that I have to leave and possibly, even probably never to return.
I even love being confused by the local currency until I work out a “Gary Collier” formula to align it with the Australian dollar.
Maybe these wondrous things make time seem a bit kinder and my place in it more relevant.
The other thing that I have to take into account are my advancing years. Haha …
