The Traveler

“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do-especially in other people’s minds.  When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then.  People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”

-William Least Heat Moon.

Last year on a Saturday morning, I suddenly got myself offline, disconnected from all the means of communications without which life of a geek like me becomes very difficult. I stopped using Whatsapp, Facebook, E-mail and even intermitted replying to text messages. When I resumed, there were number of unread emails, messages and missed calls
In between these two points there were number of checkpoints of experiences which I was striving to have since long. It had been long since I went for an outing or a short trip which was almost unplanned. Though Life is itself an unplanned adventure and we all are here to live it as best as we can, taking a break from routine, disconnecting yourself from the virtual world and feeling yourself connected with the real world is an experience worth having.
A solo unplanned trip gives you some unexpected experiences, good or bad, but it is certainly worth trying. The best thing about not planning in advance is that you are always prepared for the best to the worst. I had some pleasant as well as difficult moments but at the end of everything, I enjoyed a lot. One advantage of travelling alone is that you focus more on present than spending most of your time in capturing moments. 

‘The best moments of life are those which you forget to capture in camera but it gets captured forever in your memory.’

 I have seen people capturing moments for future instead of enjoying it in present. Some people, instead of enjoying the ongoing show, captures it in camera and then (try to) enjoy it later. While some people live in present and take the full out of it. I prefer to be the latter one.

Taking a break from the life dominated by World Wide Web and smart phones, you get some feelings which are not at all possible in virtual life.

Sometimes listening to tweets (of birds) is more enjoyable than posting one (on twitter).

Sometimes expressing your emotions requires more than 140 characters (of tweet).

Sometimes sketching your thoughts on a paper gives more pleasure than clicking photos.

Sometimes a journey guided by your heart is more adventurous than following Google maps.

Sometimes managing your time is more important than managing your timeline.

This article was published in State Bank of India Souvenir 2016 at SBLC, Bhavanagar which was originally written in my diary in 2015.

Pic credit: Clicked by Prem Solanki during our visit to white ran of kutchh