[written ages ago but only just released from draft]
Tired of lying in the sunshine
-- ("Time" / Pink Floyd)
I've had my April 1st entry sketched out for half a year. It was to be
called "Adventures in Fiction", and in it I was to confess that I had
secretly returned to Australia a scant few weeks after leaving. Having
been unable to cope with Bali, and knowing that other places were even
more discomfortingly alien, I'd secretly returned home to Australia
where I'd spent the last 11 months hiding out in Gosford, playing
computer games, programming, and mining other peoples' travelogues for
material with which to construct my own, unable to confess my shame at
having failed so miserably as a backpacker. But in that journal entry,
still thoroughly ashamed, I was coming clean and asking forgiveness for
my mendacity. And, you know, I think it would have been plausible
enough to have worked. It was certainly a good rationale for why there
were no photos or postcards.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
-- ("Time" / Pink Floyd)
So far I've travelled for 9 months, visited 11 countries (12
including a brief stopover in Colombo, Sri Lanka on the way home),
missed four weddings (and thankfully no funerals), spent the tail-end
of my 32nd birthday on an 20 hour train from Bhubaneswar to Chennai,
and written 63 subjective entries of dubious accuracy and variable but
generally increasing quality. And I'm travelled out, which I didn't
think I'd be, as I blithely set out on 2006-04-23 to travel for at
least 14.5 months; there was a point at which I envisaged my travels as
most likely lasting until the end of this year - so twenty months or
so. In hindsight, my answer to "How do you eat an elephant?" was
actually "Take one very large blender and a straw...". Oh foolish
foolish Taro.
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
-- ("Time" / Pink Floyd)
Anyway, why was I travelling for that mysterious figure of 14.5+
months? Well, that was how long I had half paid leave (By the end of
the 14.5 months, I would have had 7 and a bit months half-paid long
service leave, and 7 and a bit months half-paid annual leave usable -
leave is accrued while on leave). And why, far more importantly, am I
travelled out? Basically, the periods when I enjoy new sights/sites
have been getting increasingly shorter, and the periods when I can't
take another monument, mausoleum, mosque, museum, mountain or
monastery, are getting increasingly longer. In retrospect Kathmandu
was really the tipping point. In short, I'd rather play computer
games, program, and read other people's travelogues, and since that's
the case I may as well be in Gosford since there's no point in
travelling for the sake of travelling.
This isn't just the extended bout of food poisoning talking. I very
much liked Darjeeling and Pelling, but my time in Gangtok was more
inside than out (If you've spent a week in Darjeeling, then Gangtok is
not particularly special - though the trip to Tsongo Lake was great).
In Kolkata, wandering the inner city was pleasurable - it's far nicer a
city than its reputation would have it. For some reason the phrase
"Black Hole of Calcutta" has stuck, and I'd a back-of-the-mind image of
wall-to-wall slums which didn't quite accord with my front-of-the-mind
knowledge that it's a tech centre. Central Kolkata has some lovely old
buildings including a wonderfully gothic High Court complex and the
Victoria monument, wide streets, and the area of the Maidan -
kilometres of grass, parks and gardens, fields, playing fields,
racetrack, and (active) fort. [Yes, there's some hideous poverty on
and within walking distance of the Sudder Street tourist ghetto, and
elsewhere, but there's also the Park Street area, where
stylishly-dressed crowds queue to enter expensive restaurants, and huge
billboards everywhere with ads for the latest mobile phones, 11000
rupee digital cameras and other consumer goods and luxury items].
Closing time
You don't have to go home but you can't stay here
-- (Closing Time / Semisonic)
But I didn't go into the Indian Museum despite passing it a dozen
times, nor into the Victoria Monument, the Marble Palace, or any of the
other sights. I started out intending to visit a couple of other
Museums one day, and never quite made it that far. And, sadly, I don't
regret having missed them, and that's not good; nor is it fair to any
country to travel it without sufficient enthusiasm. I like India - a
few people suggested that India was a place you either love or hate -
but I can't see myself being untempled out and unmuseumed out any time
soon.
If it were just India, - I have been in Asia for 9 months and West Asia
for 3 - I could hop a plane to Egypt or Turkey or Prague and see
something rather different, but I suspect that this travellers' ennui
is a general one and I don't want to get to the Pyramids, Petra,
Cappadocea or Istanbul and find them Just Nice. So, Gosford it is --
or, rather, Sydney then Canberra -- and India and Asia Minor and North
Africa and Europe will still be there in another couple of years, when
I can take them in with fresh eyes, mind, and enthusiasm. And I don't
regret that. And it means I'll see friends in Australia sooner than
expected, at the cost
of seeing friends in Europe later than expected.
I travelled from Kolkata to Puri (Orissa) to Chennai to Bangaloru to
Palolem (Goa) to Mumbai, and since making the decision to return nearly
a month back, I've not yet regretted making the decision to return. I
decided in Puri that I was no longer a backpacker and no longer a
traveller. I was On Holiday, and with that change in classification I
was free not to do anything useful for days at a time. So I didn't.
And life has been good. I've wandered a little but I've felt no
obligation to really see those places properly - which would be wrong
and unfair to them if I were a backpacker or a traveller, but
fortunately I'm not. One of these days, when I am again, I'll see
India properly.
No bird exploring in the sky
Explores as well as I
The corners of my life.
One must keep moving with the times.
-- ("A Bowler Hat" / Stephen Sondheim)
I told someone that I wasn't travelling to find myself, I was
travelling to lose myself. I knew quite well who I was, and that's
still (un)fortunately the case. Losing myself? Well, most of my
flaws are still my flaws - and though a number have the edges knocked
off them, they come through loud and clear in this journal. Still, I'm
only halfway through this current journey, even if there's going to be
a brief hiatus of a year or five. Anyway, that, I think, will do for the moment.
Will you still need me? Will you still read me?
When I'm 64.
