Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Wanderlust

Stuck in the library,
A week before the exams,
Watching the rain come roaring down,
Books lie forgotten.

Something about today is making me dreamy. The rain, pictures of places around the world on my Tumblr dashboard, the travel section of the latest issue of the school magazine: they’re all making me not want to be here right now.

One of the things that I want to do most in the world is travel. I’ve always loved travelling, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to understand the sheer massiveness of the world! There is so much to see, and probably not enough time to see it all.

There is no place that I don’t want to go to. I want to sit in a cafe on a cobbled street in Paris; take brilliants photographs in Barcelona; gape at the Grand Canyon; row down a road in Venice; marvel at the blueness of the sea at a beach in Greece; get lost in the crowds of Mexico City; ski down the Alps; stroll down La Rambla in Barcelona; feel the heat of the deserts of Morocco; spot all the gnomes in Wroclaw, Poland; and so much more! And I don’t want to go to just the popular places: I want to see the Navagio Shipwreck in Zante, Greece; the cliffs of Étretat in northern France; the beaches of Anguilla; the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia; the Minorca Island in Spain; the World Heritage Site of Sana’a in Yemen.

I want to spend more than just a few days in a lot of places: I want to spend a couple of months, I want to get to know some cities! I want to know about the not-so-popular nightlight spots, the seedy bars that make the best Bloody Mary in town, the unknown restaurant that will change what I think I know about pasta.

And I want to know India. I want to take four-six months just to travel around India; go to small villages and big cities, see all the great historic monuments I’ve only heard about, see the monuments that I haven’t yet heard about. I want to know and understand India in a way you only can if you’ve seen the problems that her people face.

There is too much to see, too much to do. Everyone says that it’s impossible to get the chance to do everything you want to do, to travel as much as you want to. But I have to make it possible.

4 comments:

Vaishnavi Nair said...

I love that as you express yourself, I find myself wanting too. You definitely deserve a way off Li Ka Shing.
Good luck with it, dude. Good luck.

Anonymous said...

I wish I could be revealing my identity as I write. But then again, it might now mean anything. I like the way you write. I like your lust for the world. Most of all, I like how you write with an air of annoyance but at the same time, make your post happy.

Sumedha said...

@Vaish: Thanks for visiting! I like a lot of your writing too! And one of your pieces gave me a concrete idea about a notion I'd been toying with for a while, so I managed to write something I've been wanting to for a while. So thanks. :) And yes, I WILL get out of Li Ka Shing and travel the world. Have to.

@Anon: I wish you'd tell me who you are, if I know you. But I'm glad you like what I write. I felt exactly that way when I wrote this post: annoyed but happy when I started thinking about traveling. So I'm glad that came out in the post. :)

Vaishnavi Nair said...

Wonderful! Post it soon. Enjoy home. :D