What’s one of the most meaningful travelling experiences you’ve had?
Sitting on the bus today, not travelling anywhere special, I suddenly felt like asking everyone I knew the following question: “what’s the most meaningful travelling experience you’ve had?” Since I obviously couldn’t ask everyone one I knew, I emailed one of my best friends, who replied, then asked me to ask myself. This is what I wrote:
“Flying to Mumbai to see K and India, I think. India was and is one of those countries I keep hearing about, first since two of my closest Norwegian friends went and were completely fascinated by the place. Coming from one of coldest, most slow-paced, wealthy and least populated countries in the world, India is interesting just by the sheer contrast that it offers. You can talk about poverty tourism, and how dubious it is when middle-class Norwegians fall in love with India, but I’d like to think the accounts that I got were both delivered, and received, in a pretty balanced manner. In other words, I wanted to love it too but I also knew better than to romanticize one of the poorest countries in the world.
The two main realizations that I did were probably, one, if you have the chance to, you should absolutely, definitely impulse-buy tickets to visit people that you love; and two, never stop manufacturing opportunities where you might learn or think something new, be enchanted or inspired. That doesn’t necessitate travelling, but travelling just happens to be one of the ways you can do this very effectively if, that is, chance and will wants it so.
Another trip was when I interrailed around Europe alone. It took me a few years to admit this but what I learned from it was actually that I don’t like travelling alone. Pretty adorable in hindsight. There I was, 20 years old, I had just broken up with my boyfriend, finished my course in Denmark early to do something completely on my own. Note that in my decision to take on ‘the world’, ‘the world’ was Europe, one of the safest continents in the world. Anyway, it was still one of the smartest moves I made. I remember feeling very brave during the trip and afterwards. In hindsight, I think that confidence turned out to be so generative that it hardly matters now if what I did was actually very ordinary.
And of course, I watched Before Sunrise before I left, so I was continuously disappointed when I realized that most trains don’t have handsome, introspective men built into them.”
