on contradictions

 Traveling is not all that its talked up to be, especially on trips that require one to rough it out on an assignment. I always always have wanted a job with a travel profile, and I have one now. But I regret each time i have an outstation assignment – when I have to get up at unearthly hours to make a quick departure. At those 5am moments, I always promise myself I will immediately reevaluate everything I’m desperately wishing for. One cant be too careful about what one is wishing for and I did desperately wish for a traveling sort of a job.

Even two days on the road, alone, without a bath, indifferent food, lack of decent bathrooms or even a bus driver who insists that there is no stop for the next one hour with a ‘ladies bathroom’ is enough to make one intensely dislike outstation assignments – the truly, the only saving grace is the quality of the assignment (duh).

After a point, most places look pretty much the same. The same kind of trees, the same kind of winding roads, nearl the same sunset, something even the same kind of people, same dialogues.

Sometimes its the hope that something beyond that tollnaka will change that makes us go that extra mile, it is the adventure, yes. People say even that travel broadens one’s horizon – we never return wearing the same shoes we leave in. But who has measured this intangible thing. Its just a series of anecdotes leading to the formation of a theory, a quote. 

Its perhaps just the fatigue now that I want to scream when a trip is round the corner. It feels jaded. Again perhaps its only the people or the lack of them when I travel – then again its not so much the roads we take but who we take them with that broadens the mind. So, maybe traveling in leisure with some friends is all that its talked up to be but then from past experience even this is only until the time I feel cramped in space, style, and thought and yearn to go wild. Grow at my own pace.