I suggested that my proposed travel book should ‘reflect the enigmatic and uncertain moments of travel.’
An enigma is something or someone hard to understand or explain, a puzzle. Travel, by presenting new places and cultures, has the potential to face the traveller with things and experiences that are enigmatic. In our connected world travellers can increasingly anticipate what awaits them and today’s guidebooks are now primers on the unusual and quirky, rather than concentrating on a catalogue of classic sights. But there will still be enigmas, mysteries, which arise from gaps in our understanding and the shifting everyday world that no guidebook can anticipate. Finding everyday things in an unexpected context and unexpected things in an everyday context lifts travel above a ticking off of great sights.
Being confronted by an enigma may be one of the uncertain moments of travel. Uncertainty may also arise from more mundane and troubling events: illness, a puncture, terrible accommodation, getting lost, lost luggage, a cancelled flight, a frightening personal encounter and so on. Sometimes these may turn into memorable new travel experiences. Being forced to depart from the original, carefully planned, itinerary may be the making of a journey.
What underlies these thoughts is the belief that you don’t have to go to extraordinary places to have extraordinary experiences.
Photo: Wadi El Seboua, Egypt, 2000
Photo: Albania, 2001
Photo: Wellington, New Zealand, 1996
Photo: Oamaru, New Zealand, 1996