On Travelling

There’s a scene in the movie “Motorcycle Diaries” where the characters of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and his friend are travelling through the Atacama desert in Chile on their way to Peru. They meet a couple of peasants in the middle of the desert and they sit down to share stories and a hot drink over a camp fire. The peasants tell them of how they’ve been forced to leave their homeland because of political unrest and bad working conditions. Then it’s Ernesto and his friend’s turn to share their story. Ernesto tells them how they are travelling “just to travel”. A silence takes over the camp. Ernesto and his friend sit there almost in shame, and the peasants in complete disbelief that people can and do this. Finally the female peasant breaks the silence and in acceptance tells them, “Bless you... Blessed be your travels”.

The reason this scene was so significant to me was that when I was younger I never understood why people enjoyed "travelling" just for travelling. Like the peasants in the movie, I was raised in a very different place, where people only travelled when they had to, usually for work or escaping a physically dangerous situation, so unless your job was an explorer, then it didn't make sense to travel.

I couldn’t understand why people would choose to travel unless they had to. Later I came to almost despise it because a lot of the people I knew then described themselves as “travellers” when they meant to say “tourists”, or when they would try to make me believe that because they had travelled they were somehow more “cultured”, more “experienced”, better than average. Travelling to me in these cases always seemed a luxury, something someone did by choice and not for survival. It seemed redundant and I found it offensive that these travellers acted as if their journeys had been some part of a humanitarian mission. Seeing a pretty place or partying with other tourists or eating local food did not seem particularly special to me.

And then came another time of my life I found it very hard to stay in one place—the anxiety was unbearable—so I started “travelling” too. It took me ages to realise that running away doesn't make your problems disappear, because your problems have a tendency to follow you around.

As I grew up I eventually came to have more tolerance of this travelling business and I came to see some places myself which made me feel blessed because nature can be so breathtakingly beautiful. Yet still, travelling to me is still only escapism. But everything that isn't survival-related is escapism—and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Travel

One day she left to travel. I’ve always believed that those who like to travel are running away from something. For a while it seemed as if everyone was travelling. Maybe everyone was running.
One day I travelled and a lot of things happened, others changed, and the rest remained the same.
She left, but she said it wasn’t because of me. I believed her because, well, why wouldn’t I? One day she called me and asked whether I missed her. I wish I hadn’t said anything, but I said I did. (Sometimes it’s less complicated to say nothing at all.) She said she hoped I wouldn’t forget her, nor the things we had lived. After that, we said nothing at all.
When I realised that there is nothing behind travelling other than self-indulgence, I wanted to humiliate her, myself too, and to just tell everyone “the truth”. We wanted to deny it, but how could we?
She ran away from the truth and left. Me, I keep thinking that those who like to travel are running away from something.

One day I left to travel. It was early on since we’d met, but I missed her as if she had been a part of me for centuries and lives before that. She called me to wish me well. I told her that I missed her and that I loved her deeply. She didn’t know what to tell me so she told me that she had missed me too, and wished me well (again). I don’t know what happened to us since then.
One day, without saying a thing, she travelled to the same place where I had been without her. She never told me about that trip and I can only ask myself, “could it be that she forgot about me in the same place I had gone to forget about her?” The secrets that the mountains must hold.

One day, walking alone through life (or the park), I thought I heard something that sounded like my name. I wanted to cry but I kept quite. Sometimes I can get so lost in the silence that I even forget the name God himself has given me.
Lost in the silence one day, I thought I heard my name. It wasn’t anything. My consciousness was shouting at me to wake up. The vice of nostalgia was crying to tell me to let myself go. The stars tried then to tell me something, but who sees celestial things during daylight? (The faithful ones who never wander?) I got myself lost because I listened to those three things that were screaming things that I heard as my name but in reality were probably saying something closer to “No!”.

One day she tried to embarrass me for speaking of God. Who was I? Who am I? God knows who I am, the rest doesn’t matter.

—2005 (I initially wrote this story in Spanish, but I’ve recently started to think about it again because I’m on holidays – and not travelling.)