Traveling in the days of Covid-19
Traveling has been weaved into my life from a very young age. Exploring different countries, cultures and continents has been embedded into the core of my very experience of life and I am grateful for that. The perspective that we can obtain from moving around is unlike any other, for it penetrates deeply into the way we think and understand the world and ourselves.
Traveling, unlike its sparkling image, is not always easy. Most often it has a tendency to push us, pull us, stretch, move and expand us, it squeezes us from within, and these can be rather uncomfortable feelings. Like going into a yoga class, and settling into a deep stretch, it’s definitely a nice experience, but only up to a certain level, only within our limits, after that it becomes painful, and we must take care to respect those limits.
When traveling, so much is out of our hands that this taking care and staying within our limits is commonly challenged. And, interestingly enough, even if everything is ok, we are still out of our known, comfort zone, and in a space of uncertainty. This instability we feel inside our guts, in the flow of our breath and in our throat. This sensing that we do not understand the culture of the people around us and the way those nearby think and perceive us. This is a feeling we rarely encounter in normal day-to-day life, when things pretty much go as expected, and we can fall into that gentle numbness of predictability, comfortably numb.
As the entire world started to go crazy sometime in late February this year, this particular craziness has had a dramatic effect on travels; on the traveling industry as a whole and on individual nomads, expats and on those that have a tendency to roam but have no specific definition.
I love the quote of Tolkien “Not all those that wonder are lost”, for I feel it really expresses a certain quality that is of the travelers life and character.
In these days of uncertainty when everything and everyone is recommending staying put. Flights have become more challenging, limited, regulations keep changing, the financial world is heavily shaken, people are feeling more fearful and longing for normality and stability, yet at the same time there is a strong and growing tiredness of being closed up in one’s homes and in their overly familiar surroundings.
These times bring us to question and look into our wishes and needs, we want to keep our safety but also our sanity, our freedom and free spirit. That sense of adventure and wind blowing in our hair. We miss the excitement of change and a sense of exploration. We try to weight our options and decide which of our desires to please.
I choose to continue traveling, as I do, and have been doing for all my life. My travels are of not touristic in nature but more about living and experiencing a place from the more local point of view. In the pace and lifestyle of the place. And so I do.
For me even thought traveling is natural is is strange nowadays. And even thought it is strange and s times complicated and even worrying, it is still inspiring and refreshing. For the moment travel within Europe, is relatively doable, while regulation, rules and implications keep changing and supersizing. It is still complicated or just impossible to travel to many many places around the world.
Yes, the flights are strange, but so is getting into any train. Airports and airplanes have become very spacious and generally people seem to be more reserved, less of a rush to get anywhere. The speed and tempo has slowed, the crowdedness and mass gathering relaxed. And in it traveling brings about a sense of nostalgia, that of unique explorations, that of pioneers off to new lands, going beyond their home and into the unknown.
People question with curiosity and wonder the decision to travel in this strange times. The question that keeps coming up, which I simply cannot recall hearing in the not-so-far-away past normal, is “-why?”
Why move, why travel
So why to move and travel? Why now? This question has not been really asked or contemplated in the last decade for everyone was traveling, everyone could relate to that need for change, the wish to outside the known and into a place that is different and a state of uncertainty. Everyone could feel the itch for adventure. It was not confined to a few rare ones, and so the question why simply did not come up.
However, once the rules of normality have changed, “why?” naturally arises. For it is only when things are unlike the norm that do we question and ponder “why?”.
So nowadays, confronted time and time again by this question, by anyone and everyone, I find it strange to look for answers and to explain my reason for traveling. That which was so self-explanatory and obvious to everyone just up to a moment ago, and isn’t not anymore.
And I wonder looking at the social change we are experiencing, which “whys” that arise now, that were question that were trivial until a moment ago and are no longer so, I wonder which ones are actually here to stay, at least for a while?
