Why I travel?

Hello Stranger,

I disappeared for a while. 

Travel anticipation

Summer has been good in keeping me away from the computer. The pages of my journal filled. When I go back to them now, they look like reshuffled thoughts of a clown. I will probably spend all winter sorting them out, going through the travels and savoring the taste of the different places. 

I’ve been asked many times why I travel so much. I’ve always taken the question with a moment of retrospect. Do I really travel so much? I guess, I move around often. I often revisit places of significance. I’m often a guest in cities that have been my home. But I’ve never crossed the Amazon or dined with the ancient dwellers of Australia. I haven’t flown across the Grand Canyon, nor have I chased antelopes in South Africa. Maybe all these adventurous images work as levers in my being, pushing the urge that make my Nature unsettling.

Mermaid Parade, Coney Island

For now the exploration takes me mostly to the jungle within cities, where the only animals running in the open wear shiny collars and barcode tattoos. An adventure is considered crossing a street on a red traffic light, smiling at a handsome stranger walking in the opposite direction, finding myself in the wrong quarter or trying that thing from the food cart, which looks like a fried bug.

Observing strangers in their habitat is another thing that travel gives me. Being anonymous releases me from common duties, which can turn even the most beautiful surrounding in an annoying impediment between me and the completion of an errand. When I travel there is no schedule, no particular place I need to be. I am free like a ghost sliding in the crowds. And this ghost likes to plunge into the madness of street festivals and flashmobs, mess with street musicians and chalk artists. It likes to see couples in love, dog owners acting as parents, the ability of pedestrians to walk and text at the same time, the noise of exclamations in different languages.

Street Band & a Dog, New Orleans

And there’s nothing better than striking random conversations with elderly philosophers, animal rights activists or cupcake sellers. A sunny table of a shabby cafe in any city can offer romance and even the sudden rain is no longer an annoyance.

When I travel I still find the patience to read the signs of shops or hit the big questions of humanity. Why do we compare ourselves? Why do we seek and want the things we don’t have? Why do we become blind to what we have? And I am still both fascinated and scared of the impact we have on our planet and how irresponsible anything we do is, as long as it is justified with making money. 

I travel for all these unreasonable questions.

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