I can hear my heartbeat. Its severe rhythmic booming means two things – I am morbidly out of shape, and, the silence around me is so complete, it’s one of those rare times I can genuinely listen when my heart talks.

It is 5:45 on a lavender morning. The mist has barely lifted off the ground, a metre at most, so that you can’t see your feet while you walk. Your hands disappear as you swing them through the dense cloud, you are armless but in motion. The air is redolent with the pungent odour of snake fruit, a smell which will forever remind you of this part of the world. You are on your way to see a fascinating wonder built by a God-determined nation. The Buddhist shrine of Borobudur in central Java, Indonesia. In that sub-conscious hour between half-asleep and fully-awake you can’t wait to get there. You’re told sunrise is the best time. As a delusional traveller you pride yourself on beating mere-mortal tourists who arrive in throngs after mid-day – you are not like them: you watch a country, you don’t just see it and move on, you absorb it.

A traveller is the world’s poshest bum – moving from adventure to adventure – a heart caged in a homeless body, temporary. The traveller enjoys the solitude of the experience, the loneness of the check mark hunt – the Costa Rican canopy bridge bounce, meditation under a banyan in Bangalore, floating on the Dead Sea with your eczema inflamed elbows being burnt to a salty crisp. It isn’t so much that you have to do any of it, the traveller needs to learn, dissect, examine, experience. Unlike the tourist, the traveller hangs around waiting for the right time when the country creates the opening, the country’s culture creates the time, the country’s people smile (or not smile) long enough to produce the experience.

A traveller is never hostile, but is often blanketed in some form of narcissistic self-aggrandizement. Kind of like a selfie for the soul. Curious and adept at milking a moment, the seasoned traveller will hold on to solitude with tenacity, but will be very willing to compromise for the curiosity of the experience. So, as a traveller you will wind alone through the crazy Cairo bazaar, but should a local invite you over for a cuppa, winking “only look habibi, don’t need buy”, you’ll give yourself over to this sneaky hospitality. Just as you will share food in a train compartment with the eccentric geriatric whose soft sandwiches are just right for her dentures, then climb up to your berth and cocoon yourself in the scratchy standard issue rail blanket. Or like when you’re contemplating the meaning of human existence at a Tamil Nadu temple and a group of gangly boys sidles up to you, amoeba-like, asking some very pointed personal questions, demanding a few photos be taken afterwards, rewarding you with massive toothy smiles.

There was that time I took a camel safari to some sand eaten monastery halfway across the Sahara only to be greeted by a resident cat. The quiet, like the sky, uninterrupted by cloudy thought, was a panacea to some troubled months in my life. Or that walk from the sea front to the hotel in Barcelona, getting purposely side-streeted, Gaudi architecture on my left, a whole world of Catalan possibilities on my right and that lothario who would not give up wanting to buy me a drink. There was also that brief moment in Sorrento where I lay down on the lapis blue floor tiles of my hotel room with a pillow under my head, drowsy with the smell of the sea. I dreamed I had a home with the same azure floor. An Amalfian breeze blanketed that slumber – I had succumbed to the delicious pleasure of a traveller’s epiphany.

Like a rainbow or twilight, the world just is. A traveller accepts this while attempting to insert her own fluidity to it. You move between yourself and creation around you with the understanding of your own duality – being a microcosm in the vast universe, but containing the universe within at once. You wait because it’s a waiting game, you laugh because it’s actually all quite funny, you hurt when your helplessness overwhelms you. You are but one, and there is still so much to learn. When you cross the chasm between doer and observer, you become a traveller. Buckle up. The ride is exhilarating.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hello! I’m Peri Desai

I’m Peri, welcome to my space. In it you will find stuff that moves me, maddens me, captures my attention, makes me question its truth. You will read what makes me curious, annoyed, energized, joyful, vulnerable.