Travelling As An Experience Or As An Escape

"Travelling must be to gain new experiences, not to escape from your current situation, Siddharth", Hemant said this to me.

"Why? Why cant I travel to escape? Maybe I'll find something that I was always looking for, or maybe I'll fall in love with something I never thought I would. Maybe this escape is what is pulling me to what I am destined to be or do. We have to go to figure it out". Said Shreekant even though he wasn't going to be traveling with me at all.

Here I am, sitting with a bunch of voices who I call my friends, discussing my travel plans. Vivek was awfully quite during this discussion.

"Vivek, you have been quite for a while. Don't you want to say something? You know, add to the conversation" I addressed Vivek, looking over at him holding his glass in an oddly philosophical manner. He is not the brightest of the group, yet he has the ability to act so aloof that whatever he says becomes meaningful to you if you give it a thought.

"This entire conversation is so stale. You should go if you want to. No discussion is needed at all" Vivek looked at the rim of his glass and said.

"So you want us to act on impulses without talking about them with people we trust and feel comfortable with, to get a different perspective? What nonsense!" I decided to rub the wall a bit to see what is underneath. I have had enough of Vivek being a nonchalant smarta*s.

"Be it experience or escape, I travel to enjoy my thoughts. I look at something new and it inspires a thought in me. I inspect that thought and it takes me down the rabbit hole. That rabbit hole tells me so much about myself that it fascinates me. That's why you see me being silent most of the time. Because most of the time I am enjoying my own thoughts being inspired from various things, like right now they are being inspired by the rim of this glass which you see me looking at with squinted eyes." Vivek looked up and delivered a monologue like he has rehearsed it many times.

Right now, I am in Lansdowne, Uttarakhand sitting in a warm cottage looking out through the window at the snow-capped trees sipping hot coffee every now and then. I may have some thought pass through my head every once in a while, but I am glad Vivek's monologue inspired me to take this trip. I really needed a change of perspective. 

Oh, so that's my motivation to travel. To get a change of perspective. 

What is your motivation to travel? Did you like what you read? Write 'Hail Vivek' in comments.