admin8570To come out the moment you become aware of it and start planning. Sometimes it’s already there waiting.
Every journey is divided into several phases:
When you dream it:
You start by dreaming, deciding where to go, fantasising about what to do, what to see, how to get around, what to eat, trying to experience the place as much as possible and trying, or at least attempting, to experience the everyday life of the people who have lived there for a long time. In the meantime you indulge in a few OUT-of-town excursions. When you choose in your mind where to go there begins an inesorable path that will take you day after day in an interminable wait, you can’t wait to leave to start packing your trunk, mine has always been backpacked. You start reading books, articles on the web to find out about the city, how to get around and how to compare the various articles you can find on the web.
Traveling is an art. It must be practiced with comfort, with passion, with love:
TIZIANO TERZANI
This is the first phase, in my opinion the most exciting, the phase in which planning the ‘next trip’ makes you much more active and gets you away from the usual routine, because time passes and you don’t want to arrive unprepared. You go on living your everyday life, but the more time passes the more you have a mix of excitement, anxiety, fear. Yes, because you think, what will I find? What kind of people will I meet on my way? What places will I visit? Will everything go well? Will it be a journey that will make me grow? And why not change my life?
These are all questions that a traveller asks himself on every journey. The day of departure: WHEN YOU LIVE THE JOURNEY. The big day arrives you get on the plane, off you go. It all started a long time ago, but now you are experiencing it. You are touching cultures and realities quite different from those you have experienced so far. There your mind is just focused on where you are and what to do, what to see.
You forget about everything, you forget about the usual routine you left at home, at least for the moment.
You start with ‘the obvious places’, those common places that everyone visits because they are customary. You find them attractive, you try to fantasise with your mind. At a certain point you start to go further, you realise that it is not enough to visit the ‘obvious sights’. You have to do more, because you want more, you have this need. And that’s when you start to breathe and understand the customs of the place, you go to the suburbs, you eat the local dishes, you try to live like them. Every traveller knows that this is what happens on every journey. But inexorably comes the day of departure, of the return to your life, to everyday life. Upon return, the third phase begins:
REMEMBERING.
Yes, because the moment someone asks you what it was like, what you did, where you were. There your mind starts a process of remembering punctuated by images imprinted in your mind that no one can erase.
But all it takes is a simple article on the web, a photo from your mobile phone, and the memories start flowing. But it is only a passing memory, yes, because when you plan another trip, a new falling in love will begin, a new phase. That will lead you to relive the same emotions, the same fears and ask yourself the same questions. Each trip will make you a different person, make you grow and teach you a different life lesson.
Much of who we are is a result of where we have been.
WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE
As an old Chinese saying goes, “the person who returns from a journey is never the same person who left”.
And as you wade into the horizon you begin to remember, you begin to dream, you begin to ask yourself a question.
Next trip. I’ll take….it all starts here.
