Why I travel alone

“Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice.” 

- Pico Iyer

As a traveller, I began to stop wanting to figure out places long ago. Places had a way of communicating to you, and it almost depended on what you were seeking. I was seeking melancholy, and in the fallen leaves, the diffused moonlight in the mountains, or in the rainy city of Seattle, I was at peace with what seemed so universal – the sadness, and the ultimate ecstasy of not belonging.

The first time I noticed his hands, I didn't like them very much. The ways the fingers stopped short abruptly, suggested he wasn't a writer. But I was only travelling, a passer-by looking to write some poetry, and feel the romance of the mountains, and the cold. Travelling was always like the start of an affair, and there had never been an itinerary. I wasn't the tourist who packed her days and nights with the list of things to do. Places have a way of letting you in. They come to you quietly, and if you walked a curfewed city, like I once did, you would know what I mean. The trees looked stoic, and everything seemed to be mourning the loss of normality, and yet, as a traveller, I wasn't afraid of walking the streets by the Dal Lake alone.

I never carry maps. I only carry notebooks. You leave with statics, with raindrops frozen in the camera, and you travel with vulnerability. And with the hope that love can redeem every misfortune. Not that love lasts either. Not when you are never going to stay.

To travel is also to let oneself be entrapped. But one always has a ticket out. The only thing is the time in between the two, but exit routes are open. The timelessness of a lonely traveller is a unique thing. It is a state that offers no explanations. It doesn't stay long enough for those awkward moments of arguments over staying longer to see if this could be home. Because, for most parts, we carry home within us. In strange hotel rooms, you find the impermanency appealing. I remember once standing outside the motel room in Utica, a town I had lived in for a few years before moving back to India, and watching the pine trees at dusk while the rain drowned every possible noise around. It was last year, and I had gone back after six years to meet those I had tried not to forget. And when on a rainy evening, I couldn't locate Sunset Avenue where I lived in a house with a wallpaper of yellow sunflowers, I felt like I was part of some strange dream and the snippets of my life in Utica were just imaginary musings of a mind so used writing and reading stories. But then, there was the coffee shop, and old acquaintances, and the girl who drove from Rochester to spend an evening with me. She and her brother had come to America six years ago as refugees from Myanmar, and now she was doing well. They had remembered me, and I had never forgotten them.

A traveller also returns to places. Because you also leave a little bit of you everywhere. And there's that hope of finding your lost self. Travelling alone was always a choice. Not because you didn't have company, but you always looked forward to nights by the window, and a lamp glowing by the bedside, and playing music that made you dream. Wonderment is a personal journey. Conversations jar it.

You left, and they stayed. The old woman in the door looking sad for she was left with the place while you went on to explore others, or the man in the street who said he cried when you left.

You saw him waving goodbye, and then his silhouette receded, and you looked back until it was goodbye. And then, you turned away, and looked forward to the departure.

And about the hands, I must admit I was looking for excuses to wander on. There's something about the way a person holds his head in his hands, and if the fingers weren't slender, the melancholy of the image would be lost. That was the first thing I noticed about him in that lonesome hotel on a cold night when he lit his cigarette, and began to tell his story.

That was a 70-room hotel and I was the only guest. That was last year in November in Srinagar, and the stone bed in the room reminded me of a tomb. Late in the night, I saw a silhouette. The green of the stained glass window was aglow. The moon had just positioned itself where I could see its silver gleam. I could hear dogs bark in the distance, as the moon moved in the sky.

I hoped morning would come soon. In that dusty room, I lay on the stone bed thinking about why I had come. I had travelled alone. Like always. And the streets had been empty that evening. There was a curfew, they said. The state had killed two innocent boys at a procession.

He told me about the trees, and the brutal winters. The trees with their flaming red leaves in autumn were fabulous, and the gold leaves that whispered when I walked on them would have made for a beautiful collage except that I wasn't painting. I wandered in the orchards and sat by the window watching the streets. I went up to the shrine, and saw women wail. I pressed my head against the cold stone, and prayed. I always end up at shrines. I watched the pigeons fly away, and return, and I sat alone in a restaurant and nibbled at some food as I observed people in this strange city with its conflicts, and its romance, and as I drove along the Boulevard Street, I knew I would return to fill my notebook.

And I sat by the Dal Lake on that November evening and counted the stars, and sipped coffee, and watched men in pherans walk past me. There wasn't much to think except the script of this journey. The evening was spent with four women who had returned to retrieve their memories from their flood-ravaged homes, and spoke about the days when they would go to coffee shops, and cinema halls, and parlours. We were all staying at Almond Villa. The owner had allowed me in only because I was alone, and confused. In such matters, I had always depended on the kindness of strangers. They had always taken me in. Vulnerability is a beautiful thing.

***

I travel to write. I travel only because unknown places offer themselves without their guard to travellers who they almost always underestimate. There's always the battle, and inch-by-inch, both concede to each other. If we didn't travel, we would never have unravelled the plots, or found stories to tell. The fact that I chose to write also meant that I would have to give up the comfort of a conformist life. To dispel myths, therefore, it was important to undertake journeys alone. In order to understand, love, lose and renew these cycles, and then, when you return, you would have long nights with notebooks for company. Until, the next adventure.

I never chose destinations. A poem, or a sentence in a book would make me yearn to see some places. Like Cuba. Gabriel Garcia Marquez had once said in an interview when he was asked why he didn't move to Cuba that he couldn't live with the lack of information, and precisely for that reason alone, I had wanted to go to Havana. I wanted to be without information. Those who travel alone are also nostalgist. They seek to recreate what they lost. It doesn't matter if it was a personal loss, or the loss borne by their ancestors. It is about experiencing as much as one possibly can, and be on a time machine.

And sometimes, it also means your journey ends in a transit lounge. Last year, I was stuck at the Frankfurt airport, and never made it to Havana.

Havana is full of possibilities. That's what Graham Greene wrote, and I kept going over it as I walked at the airport, and despaired at the thought of not making it to Havana. I stayed for a night at the airport, and slept in a corridor before boarding another flight to Kuwait, and eventually to Bombay, and then to Delhi. An industrial strike in Germany had prevented us from boarding, and from the glass window, I watched the plane take off. That was the flight I had missed.

But transit zones are possible places. On the screen, destinations would flash. They would appear, fade out, and others would beam. You could go anywhere. Warsaw, Lisbon, Prague, Cancun, Rio, Iceland, or to some lonely, forlorn and forsaken place. I had fallen off the map then. Airports are "nowhere places". Or "everywhere places". They are sanitised spaces. I always thought they all smelled the same.

But that was a journey too. I was alone, and suspended for the time being. I had the notebook for company, and found strangers like an airport manager who brought me food coupons. Nowhere is bad. If you are looking for romance, the possibility is even in the most desolate places.

To get halfway to it, and return. I realised that some places weren't ready for you yet. Or maybe you weren't ready for them. Because sometimes, it is important to give love time. Even if that means crossing a continent, and returning, and leaving the possibilities of yearning open.

But if I were to be with another, the experience of the suspended hours in the transit zone would have meant complaining about our state, making decisions that would be ours halfway. I would rather collect and soak the chaos alone than share it. People have asked me if I am ever afraid. I always say that everything can go wrong when you are in transit. But if you are alone, you will find what you can endure. It's all about endurances. It is also about escapism. I never denied I was an escapist. When you escape, you also build up your reserves. A forever runaway is the one who doesn't believe in ownership. Why own anything?

***

Impermanent places like hotels that hold you for that night, or for more than one night, are my favorite places. I have never unpacked fully in any hotel. I like the idea of living out of suitcases. They will offer themselves to other strangers after me. Like they did before I came along. I always look for an old hotel. There, they have those velvet lampshades with tassels that cast a diffused yellow glow on the walls and the floor. It is a beautiful light, and conducive to composing sentences. I have never taken to white lights in a hotel room. In Lucknow once, I got them to change the bulbs. They had been amused. But when you are looking out of the window at night with your notebook in your hands under the lone yellow bulb, you know sentences are on their way. The story might take a few more visits, but for now, this is good enough.

It is the continuum of travelling that is most appealing to me. You travel alone because nobody else will fully understand why you would go all the way to California, and not go to downtown San Francisco. For others, it is a blasphemy, a waste. For me, I am better off sitting alone in a cafe thinking of why the poor people live here because rents are so high. If I could, I would spend all time in taxis. The drivers came from places I had put on my mental map. Ethiopia, Iran, Algeria, and China. An Iranian cab driver told me how he had escaped here 25 years ago, and how the American dream is just a projection. He was driving the cab late at night, and he was old. He was trying to live the hard life in America with dignity. Then, there was the Ethiopian who said he would rather go back, but the money here was better, or the Chinese woman who said Indians were so smart they got the best jobs in Silicon Valley.

***

I always travelled to fall in love, and then went somewhere else looking for that bit of fleeting romance that I had read in the many fairytales since I was a little girl. And little girls are always dreaming, and in all of us, there is an eternal child that refuses to grow up, sober down, and do the things that grown-ups do. You realise early on that in order to be able to love, you should keep going away. There is nothing that will last forever. Why chase the idea of forever?

Like I went out to sea in a trawler this month with the fishermen in Malwan secretly hoping to find mermaids, and when they laid the silver fish on the deck, some of the silver stayed on my hands, and feet, and I wondered, if I stitched myself a mermaid costume, and dived deep into the sea, would I become one. But then, travelling was never a practical thing. One must carry the romances of books within. And then become the little girl all over again, and in the company of strangers, and make up stories about them, and walk alone on the beach, and hear the waves crash, and watch their relentless efforts to resist the temptation to be one with the land.

I started out for places I sometimes never reached, and yet there was something to write about, and some love to remember.

I also longed for the sorrow. Somebody had once told me betrayals are beautiful - that feeling of bidding farewells, and then hoping it isn't the last time you are seeing them, and knowing it well that it could be the last time you are seeing them. And many times, I have wondered as I turned back to look at the person waving back, and wondered if he even knew what I knew.

There's a passionate night to remember, and there are those moments to recall when you walked inside a cafe with your heart beating, and yet knowing this was all part of the script. And one of the most rewarding things about travelling as Falubert once said was to know that you wouldn't return to a place. That sadness was one of the rewarding things, and imagine if you could return again and again, then the whole point of travel would be lost. There were more places to see, and more romances to experience. And more flowers to give, or to receive.

I have forever kept returning to New York City. In its familiarity lies its deception. I like riding the trains, and walking the streets late night. For me, it has always been the Gotham City. I always thought I would see Batman somewhere, and there was its eternal charm – of not finding him. Instead, there was the cold, and the elusive dream of living here, and maybe write for the New Yorker, and walk around with the wind in your face. But then, I also loved the small town America. The immense landscape, and the lonesome houses with their big windows, and old histories.

So, the traveller who is alone can never make up her mind. She drifts from this to that, and in that drifter's role, she makes her notes. If it was not for the stories of strangers, and my own trysts with them, I would never travel. I would save the money, buy a car, and keep a good house, and not look at the future with dread. But future is forever, and as long as you can go somewhere, the future is not scary. Because when you are in a strange place, you don't think of the future. You only observe, and maybe connect dots. The future, then, isn't menacing.

That's why I travel. And travel alone. I am a hoarder. I collect stories. Whether I write them is unimportant. As long as they keep coming, I will keep buying those tickets.