’Life is short and the world is wide’ so said Simon Ravel, and this sums up what most of us do - travel because life is short, and the world is wide! Some make this as organised and as comfortable as possible, others go with the flow. Who has more fun? I don’t know; we all do what we do, in the way we know to do it best.
But before I get to the topic of this review/article/tip-sheet, I must ask you this - Know what it feels like to have the devil sitting on your shoulder? No? Let me tell you.
Imagine you have to work on a Sunday. It is now way past midnight on a Saturday, and you have just stumbled home. Your brain has slowed down thanks to a generous cocktail of alcohol and sleep stirred in it. Imagine also that somewhere in the back of your mind a rapidly fading voice says ’Go get some sleep before you trip over your dupatta, or your slippers, or your tongue, ’ while another slightly louder voice says ‘Babe, you haven’t spent even two minutes preparing for tomorrow’s assignment, so go switch your computer on, and work.’
You think the latter is the voice of good sense, and turn your computer on. By the time the machine hums to life, the second voice says, ‘Sweetie, how ‘bout some warm up exercises to get you in the mood to write.’ It sounds good, so you open files, hoping to find a dangling modifier somewhere that you can actually modify, when you come across a blank word doc. called ‘10 imp things required while travelling.’
A light goes on, albeit dimly, in your brain, and you say, ‘Aha, this is my warm up exercise, ’ and roll up your chiffon sleeves and get down to finishing that article. You don’t even hear the ripples of a wicked chuckle spreading around you.
That, my friend, was the voice of the devil sitting on your shoulder.
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Back to the topic - what are the 10 most important things to take with you on a journey? Here’s my list. Agree if you will, disagree if you won’t. But read it anyways, and leave me your opinion – all opinions welcome in this space.
1 An Alarm – Do I hear voices of dissent? No? Great, agree with me on just this one please; I haven’t worked myself into a fighting mood yet. Sleeping through my station and waking up at an unfamiliar one miles away is nothing new to me. It happens simply because I’ve forgotten to set my alarm, or set it and it was too soft, and so simply didn’t wake up.
I once woke up at 7.15am to get to an 8.00am flight. Now that is not early morning, but I had been up all night, working till about 5.00am, and thought I’d grab just a few winks, and forgot to set the alarm in my cellphone. (If you’re going to do something as stupid as stay up all night till 3 hours before your flight, go all the way- don’t succumb to the lure of your bed)
Set your alarm at its loudest, and then (this is the most important bit) slip it into your pillowcase. You will wake up; I guarantee it. Do remember to retrieve your phone from the pillow case and to take it along with you though.
2 Common sense – Check your travel arrangements before you leave. One thing you have to take with you is your presence of mind, and do mundane things like checking and confirming your travel arrangements.
One time I told a friend of mine I was taking the first flight out of Chennai to Delhi. He said that would have to be the Jet flight at 6.30am, and since he was also travelling on that day, would I like to go along with him. He was a regular traveller to Delhi, I was not. I agreed, we got to the airport at 6.00am, I opened the package my travel agent had given me, and almost threw up when I saw I was on the Air Sahara flight that had just left.
3 Money – Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? What I am trying to say is that you must take more than you think you will need.
One time when I missed my flight, a quick search of my bag left me with the horrified realisation that I wasn’t carrying my credit card. I had to travel, so bought a full fare ticket in cash. I managed on Rs.173 - Rs.110 for autos, Rs.50 for 2 meals, and came home the next day with Rs.13 in loose change in my bag.
4 Credit cards – Being the type that cuts up her ATM cards, I’m heavily dependant on cold cash, or a bit of blue plastic. This bit of blue has rescued me more than once.
Air Deccan dumped me, and my kids outside Madurai airport one night. At that time too I was travelling with only a couple of hundred rupees in my bag, and as AD has a no cash refund policy, (unless of course one has paid cash for the privilege of flying the airline) if my credit card had not bailed me out, my kids and I would have had to camp in the airport parking lot.
5 A sense of humour – When you attract disasters of all magnitudes, you have to learn to laugh at them all.
Once a friendly taxi driver dropped me off at the edge of a cliff, pointed at a tent pitched at least a couple of hundred feet below on the banks of a river, and told me that was my ’hotel.’ I had to clamber down the hill side, wearing 2 inch high heels, and carrying my luggage. This ’hotel’ came complete with holes in the ground for loos, and poor me had arrived expecting 3 * luxury accommodation! After getting over my shock, I laughed, and survived.
Travel agents will fudge, flights and trains will be late, if they leave at all, and if anything else can go wrong, it will. If you are like me, I’m sure you have learnt to laugh too. It’s the stiff necked types that are prime candidates for aneurysms. Relax guys, you can either learn to laugh at the vicissitudes of travel, or grind your teeth down into nothingness. Laughing is better, me thinks.
6 Simple travel survival skills - Knowing how to read maps, or how to catch and cook lizard over a desert campfire, or even remembering to throw in a torchlight and batteries into your bag, are really useful skills. So is knowing how to read and understand travel documents.
I got into a train once – my first solo train journey, read the number on it, found my seat and settled down. Two mins later, a belligerent young man stomped over and asked me to get up from his seat. I sweetly said the seat was mine, showed him my ticket and even read the number out to him. He looked at the ticket, and then at me with this strange expression on his face, as if to say ’You’ve got to be kidding me.’ When he finally found his voice, he snarled ‘Lady, the F on your ticket stands for your gender, and the 29 is your age. THIS (he jabbed his finger into my poor ticket repeatedly, pointing to another #) is your seat.’ I took back my ticket, apologised, and quietly slunk away.
Hard lesson, but one I never forgot. Learn yours before it is rammed down your throat in public.
(Am rapidly reaching the word limits MS has set, so for those of you still with me, I’ll rush through the rest of the list in comments.)