Travelling Within Boundaries
It’s a strange time to start writing a travel column.
In some ways we have brought this new reality upon ourselves. Travel, for pleasure and business, had become more of a necessity than an option, a lifestyle priority than a mere choice. The more we travelled, the faster we spread the positives and the negatives. While we globalised and became economically flatter, we also globalised local diseases.
The world, as we travellers have known it, is undergoing a metamorphosis. The unbarred access that we have experienced in the past few decades has transformed within weeks into prison-like confinement. The ease with which we have hopped across nations has become a faint dream. Our carefree attitude is now laced with fear. No doubt that the post-Covid world will look different. Not only the travel industry, but the nature of travel will also change.
What will not change though is the force that propels us travellers forward: curiosity.
We travel for we wish to learn; we travel for we understand there are differences in the world out there, and recognising them will make us more respectful of the same; we travel for we believe that stagnation is death. That’s why, despite being locked-down, irrespective of confined movements, we will continue exploring. We will discover new worlds in books — unread, stacked and forgotten. Or, in the unstepped corners of our homes where ants have started nesting. Or, in the musty local library or the unassuming coffee shop next door that we cared little to visit so far.
I live in Sweden. On a day-off, I would usually cross the Oresund Bridge into neighbouring Denmark to sip coffee amidst Copenhagen’s brightly painted neighbourhood of Nyhavn. On a long weekend, I would take a flight across Europe to explore Modena’s famous eateries, or hike in the Swiss Alps, or watch a club cricket match at Lord’s in London. Open borders, spiked with cheap flights, had me consider myself as living in Europe with a house that happened to be in one of its corners.
Given the current pandemic, the Danes have shuttered the bridge, and other European countries have restricted inflow from Sweden. Sweden itself has not introduced a lockdown though. Which means that I travel still. My wings are clipped, and I cannot explore all corners of Europe as freely as I did once. However, once my initial frustration ebbed, I stepped out into the glorious Swedish summer to explore the parks and trails off the city of Malmö where I live. For the first time in many years, I am making most of Sweden’s famous Allmanrätt, one that gives everyone a right to freely walk, cycle, ride, ski and camp on any land with the exception of private space.
While I am doing so, I am learning that yes the freedom to travel we must all have, but it’s not always necessary that with each journey we step across boundaries. Sometimes a journey is about stopping still, and taking a pause to reflect and explore our very surroundings.
They say that every cloud has a silver lining. This new facet to travelling is the silver that I found in the current pandemic.
This article was published in The Outlook Traveller as my monthly column
