Travel is the only guilty pleasure I like to indulge in. I prefer to do the real kind of ‘travel’, not the touristy vacation trips of normal people which we ‘travelers’ like to ridicule. I travel to get out of my comfort zone, get a new perspective of my life, make friends from all over the world, improve my confidence, and learn to handle different situations independently.

During and after every such trip I always wonder if I am actually becoming a better, more evolved person as internet had said I would. Do I actually acquire a deeper understanding of different cultures and traditions, which will make me more tolerant towards different kinds of people and situations? Or I just end up emulating travel experiences of others, gigabytes of uninspiring photos, a much reduced bank balance and no wiser than I was before the trip.

Instagram is filled with millennials philosophizing from the top of a hill with the mandatory dog in the frame, about moving away from the well worn path, seizing the day and broadening our minds through travel. How to travel full time and get paid for it? How to chuck the corporate setup, become a digital nomad and have a travelling life are trending questions. Of course the laws of nature, economics and human behavior keep most people grounded. Also everyone doesn’t wish to travel full time either. There are people who are passionately busy working towards solving global health, environment, economic, social, and political issues affecting the world today. However, there are many who dissatisfied with their lives, constantly daydream to quit their jobs, pack their bags, book a one way ticket to never return.

We are bored of the routines and systems around us. Waking up to the same view of apartment complexes, taking the same bus/subway ride to work, getting down at the same stop, sitting at the same desk at office, having lunch and meaningless conversations with the same colleagues, going back home to have microwave dinner. We are tired of family members nagging us to get married, the landlord pestering for the rent, a relationship which has lost its charm, a harassing boss, faulty geyser, leaking taps, rotting vegetables in the fridge and every other greasy nuts and bolts of our lives. Our Instagram feeds filled with images and videos of unknown people diving into the blue waters in Thailand, watching the sunrise from Machu Picchu, hiking the Yellowstone national park, meditating in the Himalayas, fills us with a sense of impatience and restlessness with the banal, messy, difficult aspects of our unfulfilled lives. So we are always itching to venture out in search of adventure, thrill and happiness in faraway lands. We wish to go where the Wi-Fi is weak to disconnect and do some introspection while keeping the world informed of the same. We are dying to spend our meager savings on chasing #wanderlust to find ourselves.

We are not happy with our jobs but we also don’t know what kind of work would actually make us happy and satisfied. Maybe watching lions chasing their prey in the Savannah will give us a clue. How do I find my passion or mend my broken heart? Maybe a yoga retreat in Rishikesh will help me get a perspective on what is truly important to me. Maybe working on the paddy fields in Siem Reap will help me reconnect with myself. So what if I have never been to a farm in my own country.

We will travel to get out of our comfort zones. We will trek up to 5000 meters to witness first rays of the sun kissing the snow capped peaks surrounding us. We have, however, never seen the same sunrise from the balcony or terrace of our homes as we always wake up late and are rushing to work with a sandwich in our hands. We avoid talking to our family who have seen us through all the crests and troughs of our lives so far, as they don’t understand the travails of our wandering heart. We don’t reach out to that old school or college friend whom we haven’t spoken to in years in spite of living in the same city. We can only open our hearts and laugh uninhibitedly during fleeting conversations with random strangers in an obscure bar in an obscure street in Amsterdam. We don’t enjoy participating in community lunches in our residential society with the familiar (irritating) faces that we see every day. Staying in a monastery and cooking food for the lamas is the kind of serene experience we have been seeking all our lives. The novel experience of eating fried frogs in Bangkok is a better way to stretch our mental limits. We don’t invite our next door neighbor for tea and hear the stories of his days as a school teacher in the Sundarbans many years ago. The stories of an Israeli running a bakery in a remote Himalayan village are more illuminating as we took long backbreaking trips in rickety buses to hear them.

We have this urge to go outside our life’s boundaries to seek something intangible which will finally show us the meaning of our lives. Still in spite of travelling far and wide, we fail to come back with sustainable solutions to the problems which plague our minds. Wherever we go, we carry the baggage of our minds which is so heavy that if the airlines come to know, they would hike the extra baggage fees by 200%. Like binging on fast food or the latest Netflix series, our travels only give us a dopamine hit which wears off in a few days after which we sink back into the abyss of boredom. Even in those moments of watching the sunrise, scrubbing the elephants, fine dining, snorkeling, instead of being truly immersed in our experience, at a subconscious level we are seeking answers to our inconsequential questions.

The truth is that we are too absorbed in our abstract notions of happiness, peace, calm, self-worth and life’s meaning. We don’t have the strength and fortitude to build something bigger than ourselves, something which will stand the test of time or be beneficial to the society. We lack the ability to look at our work no matter how trivial or useless it may seem, as a small act in the larger scheme of things. We are unable to accept that a large part of life is indeed BORING. That our childhood and teenage seemed fun because our parents were doing the boring job of building a life for us. With limited opportunities at their disposal, our parents didn’t have the time to dream about long duration travel to change their lives. Our relative affluence as compared to our parents and the plethora of options, allows us the luxury of remaining depressed with our mundane existence.

In the Alchemist, young Santiago is educated but chooses to become a shepherd so that he could travel to distant lands. Later, he travels thousands of miles from Spain to Egypt to find a hidden treasure he saw in his dreams only to realize in the end that the treasure was not in Egypt but back in his village in Spain right under the sycamore tree where he had fallen asleep and seen the dream.

Through our travels, we too are seeking the treasures of happiness, bliss, peace, meaning in faraway lands with complete strangers. And maybe like Santiago, our answers too can be found within our everyday lives with our own people. Climbing up a hill, learning a new African dialect or how to cook the perfect lasagna at a cooking class in Bologna, while admirable achievements, are not the only things worthy of celebration.

While travel is indeed a wonderful opportunity and privilege for anyone who can, to experience the wonders and diversity of this planet, it is not a Chinese medicine for the ailments of our mind and soul. Travelling can inspire us to change our life only if we are not running away from it in the first place. Our real life will always await us after a few days, weeks or months. The fresh mountain air, the chorus of the sea waves, the tango classes will help us only if we appreciate that our everyday life is not a trap to stop us from realizing our dreams. That it is an anchor that we can always rely on while we take distant voyages in building the future of our dreams. All we need to do is wake up once in a while at 5 am and watch the sunrise from our balcony.