Travelling alone was like more careful, less playful, and more peaceful. Official trip, destination: Taiwan, via Hong-kong. Right from, the air-hostess filling coffee- in ‘a minute to win it‘ spirit, focusing on speed, little concern on the ‘consistent- spills’ within the tray, to the taxi-drivers- sprints getting vehicle, and scribbles receipts like last moments of final exam, all with one goal: ‘customer centricity’- min wait time.
People filled with child-like qualities: giggles-wonder-playfulness; astonished knowing, she was a year older to me. Auto-scan mode my eye fell on lady in the uniform: security at office, and guess what? She nodded and wished! Nodded back! From then-on, limited eye-contacts, back- out-here its celebrity looks. Considerate, or was it the 28 floors, pressing the close button, was like the judicious collective cultural etiquette. The reach of technology: knowing the electronic toilet at the hotel was an amusement.
Certain vegetarian food was designed just non-veg prototypes, soya chung being the chicken of the veg world, some had this fragrance of perfumes. Best part, very little of carbonated soft-drinks, shop had mostly- health conscious ones: ‘Poccari sweat’, Ph-9, all maintain alkali level of body.
5 days of sleepless work, finally, got a weekend to explore. Rather than city, decided to hit the water falls: Wulai. Automated ticketing- MBT underground train – with help of English speaking teenagers- got in hand the token to destination. Swiped-in with token, call it blunders of exploration ya learning it hard way – exited same station at the cost of inserting the token- mislead by two info board. 45min from Xindian on bus, 45 min of walk, following upstream river curves of fade blue tints, reached the falls. Mesmerizing falls, stilling the mind and chilling the spine. Eye stuck to the fall, a felt a relative flight, and for a moment was in a optical illusion, even greenery around was waving. Tech- savvy, every family member carrying a DSLR each, and had these Chinese-English translator which was used a lot in conversations. Cable car ride, one of the steepest angles, to ‘Yun Xian Holiday Resort’: Archery, paintball and obstacles courses. The info centers were pumping with info. Experimentation of some self –photography, tips: ‘never look at the camera’, people had this strange looks and some giggled at my poses.
On the way back- on the flight- was reading this book- “Walking in Zen and Sitting in Zen”, snoozed in Zen, woke-up in Zen, walked out 100m and suddenly realized my passport pouch gone missing. Quick flashes, Adrenaline spikes, search algorithm pointing to the last occurrences of ‘passport scenes’. Plane was still there- hostess ran as if a bomb was planted, and again panicked of not finding the pouch, had hung-it on the arm rest. Found-it! Else had to write the blog – ‘passport lost in transit then’. From then-on, strapped the ‘travel pouch’ on the belt.
