My Bleddy Fears

Water travel makes me nervous. One, I cannot swim. Two, when I travel international, I not only carry my camera gear, but my passport too. That summer, two years ago (when I did this trip), three passports had changed hands (the stolen, the intermediate, and the new). After debating about whether or not to take the boat ride in Lake Bled, I decided to give it a shot. I sat tight, clutching on to my bag and chanting some permutation/combination of God's name in a loop. However, people around me aren't perturbed a bit. They are in this urgent need to take selfies, and every time someone shifts, the boat slightly shifts too, giving me many butterflies in my stomach. The children are leaning out and difficult to control, as usual, the parents have kind of given up, and the guy rowing the boat tells us that the lake is only 31 m deep. Only? Even 31 feet is going to make me nervous. People are changing angles to take pictures of the lake, tempting me to ask them if they have never seen a lake before. But the father of a family of seven (parents and 5 children) take the cake. Ten minutes into our ride, he decides to play music on his handheld device. Céline Dion starts singing her Titanic song. Shit, this is a bad omen, I tell myself. God, please don't let me die like this, due to a capsized boat in Slovenia, of all places...

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My husband’s wife

Once in a while, I see a glimpse of human nature that broadens my horizon about the endless possibilities of human relationships. As I read a very interesting book, I am beginning to understand why concepts such as "one and only" and "happily forever after," concepts mostly in the human imagination have been persistently fed over generations. The idea of a husband and wife and two happy children playing on the lawn with the pets to make a perfect family. More on that book later.

I asked a colleague if she has plans for the weekend. She smiled happily and told me that she is organizing a birthday party for her husband's first wife and both are spending the weekend together with all the kids. I don't know why I heard husband but thought father, my social programming perhaps, but I embarrassed myself by asking, "Your step-mom?"

She was amused. She corrected me, "My husband's first wife, not my father's."

Wow. It takes a certain mindset and maturity, a certain degree of evolution and acceptance to be friends with your husband's ex-wife and plan her birthday. Most people I know in this awkward triangle would be ready to kill each other, and understandably so. I imagined a hypothetical situation of hanging out with my husband's wife (I don't know if I would want to be the second one or the first one if it came to that). Honestly, I don't know.  

I applaud people who can willingly be friends in complex relationships that might have involved anger, jealousy, hatred, and tears at some point. Especially because the husband, the binding agent in this case passed last year. So this birthday planning was obviously not coming from a place of compulsion.

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Week 8: Traveling when not traveling

Lake Bled in Slovenia

Read other posts with the label: 52 small changes

I did not start traveling either seriously or solo until I was in my late twenties. But once I did, it opened up a whole new world of learning for me. It boosted my confidence immensely and taught me how to pursue things independently, without waiting on people whose travel frequency does not match mine. In a span of six years, I had ended up traveling more than thirty countries, and many of them, alone.

However, I had to recently factor in the reality of my new position- being pre-tenure at a research university, which is not for the faint-hearted. It requires years of immersion in research, being very active and productive in terms of publishing and bringing in grant money. Therefore, I do not get to travel as much these days.

Scratch that. I do get to travel, but it is a different kind of travel. I travel mostly for work and conferences, and these are mostly to urban cities within the US. Baltimore. Atlanta. Boston. San Francisco. Such travel would have thrilled me many years ago, and I once used to spend my own money to visit these places during national holidays, but no more. After a point, all US cities look and feel the same. Sometimes, I do not even get to step out of the conference venue and explore the city.

When I think of my happy travel experiences, I think of hiking and driving around the Grand Canyon. I think of those beautiful sunsets and good food in Puerto Rico. I think of the blueness of the ocean in Hawaii. I think of the geysers of Yellowstone and the glaciers of Montana. I think of eating fried crickets in Mexico and Cambodia. I think of flying over Mount Everest in Nepal. I remember the flavorful stew in Dubrovnik (Croatia) and the church I hiked in Montenegro. I think of the cruise ship I took to Norway and the largest ice caves in the world I hiked in Werfen (Austria). I think of Mount Etna in Sicily (Italy) and the goosebumps I got visiting a concentration camp in Auschwitz (Poland). From the forts of Malta to the oceans of Portugal, from the mountains in Sikkim to the cobbled streets of Estonia, wonderful travel experiences have filled my life. Naturally, after visiting most US cities, the lure of Washington DC, Miami or San Diego is not much.

So how does one travel without traveling?

Once a week (during the weekend), I routinely spend a few hours watching travel documentaries on YouTube. I was amazed at the wealth of resources travel blogs and YouTube provide. It gives me a vicarious sense of travel pleasure. I randomly pick a country on the map and go find everything I can about the country. This is how I learnt about the Pamir Highway connecting Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan, the amazing bhortas and the biryanis one can eat while visiting Bangladesh, the mountains of the Himalayan range, some of the higher motorable roads in the world in Leh and Ladakh, the different seasons in a country as small as Sri Lanka, the fanciest trains in the world and what they offer, the history of Burkina Faso that was formerly called the Republic of Upper Volta, the monasteries of Bhutan, the island of Bali, and so much more. Although I would much rather visit these places in-person, this experience gives me a travel high and enriches my knowledge about the history and the geography of a place when I am cooped up working for months and do not even get to visit the downtown nearby. I find it to be a much better use of time than following the hyped shows and sitcoms.

If you want to see the beautiful, awe-inspiring, rugged mountains of Pakistan, watch the movie Dukhtar. And if you have fascinating travel experiences and itineraries to share, I would love to hear from you.

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