The Lost Girls

HCC: Sure, travel involves risk: Robbery, bombings, bird flu. But we’ve already addressed the fact that taking a trip is no more dangerous than driving your car (you’re much more likely to die in an accident only a few miles from your home). Yet with the government issuing travel advisories to Lost Girl locales such as Kenya and Indonesia (check), we’ve kept our pocketknives close and expected the worst.
So far, we’ve been pleasantly surprised (knock on wood): We’ve experienced 0 incidents of robbery, 0 bouts of avian flu and 47 unwanted sexual advances (which is roughly on par with what we’d get after five months in the New York bar scene). Cities hyped as dangerous, such as Rio and Nairobi, left us unscathed.
Still, the warnings persist. During a layover in a Mumbai airport, newscasts portraying mosque bombings in the Indian state left me more than a little nervous. And we recently opted to take the 17-hour train ride from Bangalore to Trivandrum rather than the hour-and-a-half flight not just because we’re cheap ($10 compared to $86 when pricing last-minute tickets), but also because CNN reported that all south Indian airports were being targeted by Al Queda during our time of travel.
Sure, shacking with cockroaches and sleeping on the third bunk of a coffin-like train car isn’t exactly my idea of traveling in comfort, but sometimes it’s better to be safe than sorry. Besides, botched travel plans often evoke big epiphanies.
Case in point: I didn’t realize you had to pack your own food for the 17-hour ride with a coach class ticket. A mother of two toddlers wearing torn clothing saw that I didn’t have any lunch and offered to share hers-part of a banana. Feeling guilty, I tried to refuse. She adamantly insisted, then nodded in approval as I chowed down. This is just one of many moments I’ve experienced on the road that have shown me the world outside U.S. borders is far more friendly than it is hostile—even if many media images portray it differently.
Coincidentally, I read a Conde Nast Traveler article during the ride by Jeffrey Taylor that really hit home. Here’s a quote: “The greatest though often most elusive benefits of travel are, after all, friendship, romance and a first-hand understanding of the rest of the world. Our times are admittedly troubled, so we could do with a lot more of all of these, which might lead to something called wisdom, an attribute lacking in both government announcements and media reports. So browse the warnings before you go, but go.”
I’d love to hear your thoughts: Do you think Americans' fear of travel is responsible or alarmist?
Holly