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Preface: Why travel?
Two years ago my mind had imploded. I was the result of twenty six years of education; the environment in which I was living was telling me to invest in stability through materialism and that would lead me to happiness. The further I looked down that road, the more I could see that it was a one-way street. I figured that if I already had all that security then what would I do with my life? I would travel the world.
Printing out a black and white map of the world, I marked all the countries that intrigued me. Soon the map was covered with markings and so I narrowed down my destinations to English speaking countries that would best suit my around-the-world ticket. I wasn’t going to travel for the sights, but for the people around the world. The calm leaders of India, the law abiding Singaporeans, the materialistic Australians, the reflective New Zealanders, the extreme people of Los Angeles and the intense New Yorkers.
I knew that travelling alone was the best way to encourage chance encounters, but I am an impatient sort and I wanted some form of guarantee that during my 80 travelling days I could approach anyone who shared my enthusiastic energy for life. So, I devised the ultimate ice-breaker. One that I hoped would enable me to see people in their best light, to learn the truth of the earth from those that were closest to it and be guided by them to find myself. My plan was to photograph the contents of strangers’ handbags as I travelled. It was to be pure, simple human interaction, or so I thought.
Always searching for the beauty in the mundane, I wanted to be fascinated by people who I would usually ignore. What would the strangers’ possessions mean? What were these going to tell me about them? And what would I learn to carry in my own handbag?
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Maslow, the author of, ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ states that the hierarchy of human needs starts with physiological needs (breathing, food, water), then safety (property), followed by belongingness (friendship), then esteem (confidence) and finally self-actualization (morality). Fed up with my business ventures failing to make me a millionaire, I was relieved that Maslow states that materialism is only the second level, so for 80 days I focused on achieving something far greater: that final state of self-actualization.
Day 1: Survival
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us”. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Pirelli P-Zero dissipates water at the same rate that as the tears run down my mother’s cheek as she bids me farewell on freshly laid tarmac outside Heathrow.
I glance back to see her car blur past as I walk up to the check-in desk. Ticket? Check. Passport? Check. Wallet? Check.
Relishing the disorder of not planning too far in advance, my stomach had lurched and my mind had whirled with bewilderment when I discovered a few days ago that I would be flying to Mumbai, AKA the Bollywood Wonderland and NOT the concrete conglomerate of Chennai! Without a crease on my ‘Lonely Planet’ guide it is hardly surprising that I am perspiring ignorance - those cities are two thousand miles apart! I’ll be gone for seventy days, No wait, recount, eighty! Yes I knew that. No, really I did.
The last month has been great practice for traveling. It has been like I’m already away, running around, living day-by-day just to get everything in motion. Doctors have told me it’s too late to receive vaccinations, but I’m going anyway. Visa applications have been left to the very last minute, but I found an expensive way to get around that. I feel like a bride preparing for a wedding, all my focus on one set goal and no one could stop me.
Interestingly, no one did try and stop me. They all seemed glad to see the back of me for a while, but I did notice one peculiar thing, the different responses that people gave me: suits asked me how I was going to do it, whereas creatives asked me why.
My physical planning may have been a bit slack, but not the idea of travelling around the world, I have mulled that over time and time again. Part of the catalyst that urged me to learn more was a couple of posters hung in downstairs toilets. The first is at Aunt Maggie’s house, which shows the rich poor divide of natural resources across the world  and the second is at my mums, the image from Amnesty International magazine shows the difference in the material possessions of a large, pink faced American family against a ragged, poverty stricken Indian one.
Money, money, money. I have always been fascinated with it: Who makes it? How? How much? What is the most efficient way for me to make it whilst having the most fun? Yet, like trying to understand women, I have so far failed to fully comprehend the complexities.
I want to share the finances of my trip: £1,355 for the around the world flight with seven stops, £120 travel insurance, £60 Visa for India, £90 rabies injection, £30 Malaria tablets, £33 rucksack, £20 day sack, £450 camera and £2 diary. I predict £2,400 on food, accommodation, entertainment and drinks, giving me a £4,500 total (around £56 a day). On my return (not to brag, but to set the scene of how much I am investing in trip), I’ll have £500 left in cash and own a £2,000 Mazda MX5 sports car, a £500 laptop and a £400 Nikon D70 camera.
So why travel in my mid-to-late-twenties? Having done University and the job thing (for a few years at least!) I fear that if I don’t travel now I’ll end up getting married and having kids. Plus, sex is such a powerful motivational drive that I want to capture the urge and convert it into a fuel to power my hunger for knowledge – which I hope will help me understand this world.
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Having stepped outside my comfort-zone, I don’t really care where I am going, as long as I am moving. With two roaring jet engines either side of the fuselarge within which I sit, I feel released from my home land but riddled with a sense of guilt that I’ve not actually done any research on the country I’m about to land in.
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The seat belt light turns off and at thirty-thousand feet the flight attendant asks me to swap seats with a man so that he can sit by his wife. Soon re-positioned, I find myself sitting next to Rupali.
“That was very kind of you to swap your seat.” she says as we are hurled into a conversation. I find out that this thirty-three-year-old is a top eye surgeon, married to an architect, living with the in laws and has two drivers and a staff of three. I think to myself, Bingo. I must have met the Indian Royal family!
“This is fairly normal for a middle class family,” she says. But I wonder that maybe she is being modest?
As we chat I push to achieve deeper levels of exchange than I truly feel happy with, in the hope that our relationship is deepened from the outset and the possibility that we will meet up again will be quadrupled! Learning from Rupali, I don’t need the cultural section in the guidebook at all: she talks about the class system: the rich, the poor; the places to go and the tourist things to do; her working life, exams and her education as well as her husband travelling away all the time. I’m interested, not fascinated, but it’s a huge confidence booster that a native is talking with me.
Nine hours later, we’ve landed on Mumbai tarmac. Rupali gives me a security blanket in the form of her mobile phone number and promises to show me around. Will we meet again? I hope so, but I start to doubt it because our conversation was a little contrived, and what of her husband?
By the time that I get to the conveyor belt and collect my rucksack, she is long gone. I haven’t though, so I gaze around I see the other Westerners who were on my flight today. We’re all in the same boat. Aren’t we?
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Whoosh! Out of the airport, beyond the air conditioning and neon lights, into the black night and a sea of Indian men hollering, ‘Taxi! Taxi! Taxi!’ I glance up at a clock; it’s two in the morning, where did the time go? Head down, I march past the first batch of taxi drivers focusing on the taxi kiosk off to the right of the entrance. Looking like the accomplished traveller with my rucksack on my back and my day sack on my front, I surge off and steam through with my hands in my pockets and arrive at a counter where I pull out a piece of paper with my pre-booked hotel name and address. One-elephant, two-elephant, these two seconds before the man behind the taxi counter recognizes the name of the hotel seem to last longer than the entire flight. Suddenly I am hustled off by two men to yet another man in a taxi. Whilst I am considering why one taxi ride should need three drivers, my large sack is whisked off me and I am hustled in to the front of the car. Standing my ground, I bargain my price whilst demanding that my big rucksack goes with me in the front of the taxi. Shaking their heads, they argue back. ‘No, no, no.’ Within moments I am defeated because I get rational. I figure I could live without my big rucksack and I could even afford to be ripped off for the taxi this one time. I am at the airport after all, this must happen to everyone - right?
An hour and a half later I have long since given up hope that the taxi driver and I will find the hotel. My heart is pumping and I figure it will be light soon! And hey, I’ll save more money as I won’t need a hotel anyway! Astonished at seeing what I imagine are dead bodies lined up at the side of the road, I lose focus on myself and then we arrive at the hotel lobby which I am comforted to see has a marble floor.
The hotel porters take my bags from the back of the taxi and I stand in the hotel foyer for an agonizing moment as they check my booking. Miracle of miracles, the internet has worked and my name is actually typed on their sheet of paper, next to room number twelve.
I assume that I will pop into my room, visit my marble bathroom and then collapse into bed with the TV on, but I am suddenly more awake than ever.
Standing at the door of the room I look pitifully around number twelve to see squalor that wouldn’t be fit for a Glaswegian druggy. There had surely been some mistake? It’s not that there are spiders and fluids on the floor - it’s the grime that gets to me; everything is ‘India Clean’ (already used within an inch of its life). I wouldn’t mind if it was months and months of my dirt on everything, but it is from hundreds of other smelly people.
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‘To take a sleeping bag or to not take a sleeping bag?’ That is the question many a traveller has asked. I’m regretting my decision already; I don’t need to experience this level of surviving like a local after all!
Rest comes after I have wrapped every inch of bare flesh in my own clothes so that I am protected from touching the sheets. Eyes closed, lying on my bed, the smell of the damp pillow rises from beneath my head and I imagine a gang of spiders crawling all over me.
© Will Baxter 2009
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Day 19: Inclination. Chennai, India (after a few days alone feeling a little depressed)
The Chengalpattu Station clock chimes for the eleventh time today as I sit on the metal floor of the carriage as the train pulls out of the station. I’m surrounded by milk churns and sacks of seed. Passengers pay just twelve Rupees (around twelve pence) for this two hour ride and innovate their own beds by sleeping on the overhead luggage racks. The men around me are in fact commuting, not in to work, but back from work to the Tamil Nadu countryside from the city. They must have got up at four in the morning to get the train in at five, to arrive in Chennai for seven, to then spend a few hours at market selling their goods before catching this train home. What do they do during the afternoon? Will they be back working the land? And will they do it all again tomorrow?
Today. Tomorrow. Until their son takes over.
A farmer alights at a station along the way and a bench seat comes up for grabs, the collective manner of those around me is not to move before I have acknowledged that I have considered it. I look around them but do not nudge. An elder man indicates that I should take it, I decline. Someone scurries into the seat. I continue to sit down amongst the peasant farmers with my back against the steel bulkhead at the end of the carriage and for the first time on any journey through India, no one is trying to sell me anything.
A man wearing an ironed shirt, jeans and polished shoes approaches me and starts chatting in English. Nurturing me as he talks, he seems to feel the need to take me under his wing, so I reflect the attention back on to him and ask him how he spends his time. I find out that he’s an off-duty policeman who wanted to make sure that I didn’t feel threatened by anyone on the train. We arrive at his stop; he alights onto the platform, looks back, nods and moves on.
Right now, during this two hour journey where I feel safe, secure and open, my mind is travelling further than when I travelled on the train for twenty-four hours from Hampi to Chennai. Travelling isn’t so much about the time you spend; it’s far more about putting yourself out there in a comfortable manner so that you feel open enough to experience what is around you.
© Will Baxter 2009
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Where would you like to travel next?
a) Read the author’s profile.
b) Buy the book.
c) Book a travel talk.
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