The Road More Travelled
When my partner Anita, 20 years my junior, winner of triathlons and the most beautiful woman I have known, was dying of cancer, a curious question wormed its way into my mind:
If you were told as an absolute certainty you had six months to live, but would remain in perfect health until the last moment, what would you do?
I must have asked this question of a score of people. Seventeen or eighteen, I forget, immediately gave the exact same answer:
I’d travel.
Whereupon I would ask another question: Why don’t you do that now? You didn’t need a PhD in body language to sense the discomfort this second query caused. People would look left, look right, look down, then mutter something along the lines of “Gotta make a living.”
Until I realised I was invading people’s comfort zones, I would explain that the cost of working – taxes, commuting, clothing, in some cases child care – frequently whittled their pay down to the equivalent of slave labour, thus enhancing (to my way of thinking) the cause for travelling. Since my intent wasn’t to create distress, I soon quit discussing all but the original question. What I learned from my little survey was that people, especially in NZ, 1) have a love of travel, 2) often find excuses, more times than not a tad lame, for not exercising that passion.
Anita and I met in India. I had been there untold times, moving about that wonderful, crazy land with no certain plan. This was her first shot. Not long before, four daughters now grown and gone, Anita had left a boring marriage and sought to hit the travel trail. Unable to find anyone to share a journey and a bit too uncertain to wing it alone, she signed up for one of those horrid open truck ventures full of mindless Aussie 20somethings who were “seeing” India (all of India) in six weeks. Not once did they stay more than a single night in a place. Plus, these goofs wanted nothing to do with an ‘older woman’ (48) who didn’t even drink let alone get pissed every night.
How we met: Earliest morning I was sitting outside my room on a balcony overlooking the holy lake in Pushkar, ogling the mist slowly lifting off the water, a most fetching sight. From behind me a female voice: “Is this balcony private?” I was about to say yes, and I aim to keep it that way, turned around and caught sight of this…this…vision. Oh good Krishna, I thought: I’d suffered a coronary during the night and somehow, miraculously (clerical error), I landed in heaven!
Anita explained that in 27 years of marriage she and her husband never had a cross word. Within 10 minutes we were having a battle royal over some inconsequential point which now escapes me. Thus it was a partnership made, if not actually in heaven, certainly a branch office based in the Rajasthan desert.
How I began travelling occurred in an unlikely manner. Mid-30s, constantly broke, forever depressed, one day arrived in the post an unexpected cheque for a few thousand dollars from an old and forgotten auto prang insurance claim.
“What should I do with it?” I excitedly wondered of a well-off friend.
“Travel,” he replied. (This chap himself had never been outside the good ol’ USof A.)
Shortly after, I happened to pass a sporting store having a sale. For reasons unknown, I sauntered in and spent a bunch of my new money in the wrongest way imaginable. I bought a pair of tramping boots that would be too small for Lisa Carrington. Backpack fit for Steven Adams. Sleeping bag that rolled to the size of Steven’s sister.
I was ready to go a-travelling. Only thing missing was a trailing film crew to document the scores of classic balls-ups as I stumble-bummed my way across the European continent. Nonetheless, I was hooked.
I’ve heard it said that people are travelling more now than ever before. Wrong, dead wrong. There are more tourists than ever before, and far, far fewer travellers.
For the tourist, self-discovery is out. Safety (or the fable of such) is in. Who leaves home anymore without the crutches and security blankets of Trip Advisor, Airbnb, Expedia and Booking.com, the four horsemen of tourist fear?
Often on the road I’ve seen people holding up their i-thingies and reading the online description, accompanied by stock photos, likes and five star reviews, of some magnificent edifice or vista which exists in the flesh just beyond their outstretched arm.
The traveller, meanwhile, that endangered breed of adventurer who packs a bag and just goes, becomes further anorexic.
I’ll tell you what for me has been the prime advantage not only of just-going, but of consciously avoiding the role of flea on P, hopping breathlessly from place to place to place in order to see as much as possible in a finite tract of time, instead finding a spot that feels good, building a nest and dossing down for some duration.
See, my blood family isn’t close. Never was. Over the years, though, I’ve acquired a ‘heart’ family comprised of absolutely wonderful souls. I have met these people, aged upon initial encounter anywhere from toddler to mid-eighties, by permitting the fickle winds of fate to blow me places I had no real notion of going, and once there digging in for a few or on occasion several weeks, thus getting to know some extraordinary local people, and letting them know me.
During the brief couple years before the Evil C took her, Anita and I travelled to half dozen Asian countries, equipped with no more than medium-size packs, walking sticks and healthy curiosity. People – complete strangers – adopted us, took us into their homes, shared with us their lives. Since that time, I’ve continued on this route just as I had before we met: as a solo. Because you never know when that final six-month journey will commence.
And wherever she is, whichever cloud she may be hanging out these days, I reckon my beautiful late partner is hitting the cosmic road with the same combination of carefree abandon, imagination and delight we shared during those brilliant two years.