Travel on My Mind

Some of the comments on my last post made me think hard (I guess I read constantly to avoid thinking but I am not 100% sure as of now 🙂 and motivated me to write this post.

First Prashanth said:

I have decided to travel atleast once a month – kinda mid-year resolution ;

Now ‘mid year resolutions’ seem to be such a nice idea! Come New Year and everyone would be talking about resolutions on their blogs and after a while the topic starts to get on my nerves (I originally wanted to write ‘I get sick to my teeth reading them’ but thought this is too harsh on ‘New Year’ resolutions). But tell me, how many times you came across the word ‘resolutions’ in the mid year? I guess you came across it only on this blog and we should thank Prashanth for it.

So here is my first mid year resolution: I will exercise my utmost capacity to drag Seshadri out of the house more frequently in a year. Don’t get it wrong, he loves to travel and it is he who investigates and finds out off the track places. But the problem is, he does not want to go any place other than the mountains (and only the Indian Himalayas qualify as mountains for him). Ask him to come to a day trip to Taj Mahal (go by morning Shatabdi Express Train and come back by the evening Shatabdi) and he flatly refuses. If he goes to London, he works and comes back to the hotel and refuses to explore anything on his own. And even in December we end up going to Bharmour (Himanchal Pradesh) that is freezing cold. But I am resolute that I will drag him around more from now on and to places other than the Himalayas. After all, it is a shame that the last trip we made was around January 26. And now it is only in June that we are going to travel again. This has to change.

Then we have this person in our organization who used to climb mountains, did advanced mountaineering courses and mentioned that he has climbed the highest peak in Laddakh and was once involved in a rescue in Bara-La-Chala in Laddakh. How much vacation has he taken this year? A measly five days, because they are too busy. The person is fairly senior to me and I can see 10 years down the line we may also travel differently but I never want it to happen such that we get too busy to travel. That is where Sathish’s comment comes in.

in the industry am in, if you travel so much in a year you are considered non-performer!!! 🙂

So my second mid year resolution is: I am not going to fall into the trap of ‘I am too busy to travel’ or ever be tempted to join an industry where I become a ‘non-performer’ just because I like to travel.

And then comes this comment from Rajeev

nice resolution Prashanth ! I guess it will take some more time for us as a society to reach the point where we will be comfortable with taking a couple of years off to travel :). Thanks to Mridula and her ilk, we are waking up to life.

Rajeev, this comment of your’s gave me jolt. You know what, you speak kind words about me and my ilk but here is the truth. I love to travel so much but the thought of ‘taking an year off’ never even crossed my mind. I think it will not be possible for me to do something like this in the near future but it is my long term resolution to keep this idea in my mind and at least once in my life, take one year off and just travel. My mind refuses to function properly when I start thinking of such a possibility and the practical problems seem insurmountable, but I am sure if we keep chipping at the idea, who knows 10 years later I may be able to pull it off.