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Travel Redefined

I travel to Bangalore fairly often. The journey has almost never been comfortable. My trips were far too unplanned for me to be able to procure train tickets and so I usually ended up taking the bus. Each experience was unique. I got stuck in the rain, the bus was often late, the driver would never tell me when we were expected to reach, I was "upgraded" to a different bus because the one I booked was cancelled, and so on. On one occasion, I decided to prioritize comfort over economy and booked Olivea Travels, the very definition of wanton expenditure (and therefore, luxury) because it costs half as much as flying even though it takes nine times as long. The bus was five hours late. Incidentally, Olivea Travels' tagline is "travel redefined" - quite fitting; I swore off buses thereafter. 

On my next trip I decided to fly - an equally eventful experience because my 35 minute flight was delayed by 45 minutes and the landing was truly memorable. I returned by car, got caught in traffic and missed work. I was quite delighted. 

Having tried every mode of transport other than trains, I decided that the time had arrived and I booked my tickets well in advance. I took Shatabdi and I loved it - it was like a plane except that the scenery outside keeps changing, you can keep your phone switched on and you don't get a faceful of whatever you're eating when the person in front of you reclines their seat. 

It was on that ridiculously comfortable journey that I realised the many ways in which even those who claim to love travelling numb their senses to the journey by reading a book or listening to music. On earlier occasions, I did everything possible to escape the sensation of travel altogether by forcing myself to sleep on the bus or read until the battery died out. In essence, these are attempts to modify the experience of travelling into something else. It is a refusal to acknowledge that waiting is as much a part of travelling as anything else. 

I felt a very strong urge to write all this down at the time but I became entangled in the question of whether recording an experience at that point would diminish its intensity and amount to a modification. Also, I took a different train on my way back, which was an hour late, and I was able to remember just how much I hate waiting, irrespective of its role in the overall experience.