Terrific Traveller, Terrible Tourist

From quite a number of years of travelling to lots of different places (I am a very lucky bunny), I have discovered several important things about myself: I make bad decisions when I’m tired and hungry; I get travel sick some of the time (unpredictably); I love buses (despite the travel sickness); I am a terrific traveller; I am a really terrible tourist.

And I mean it, a really terrible tourist. You see, I don’t like art galleries, museums, churches, palaces, markets, shopping, tourist tat (I don’t mind these things existing, I’m just not that inspired by them). I don’t eat meat and I don’t drink the local hooch (or any other alcohol for that matter). I don’t like beaches (except in winter and/or at night) and I’m scared of heights. I’m a really terrible tourist!!

Climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge was three hours of absolute unadulterated terror – I should have predicted this given my reaction to the top of the duomo in Milan and the various staircases (this word is doing some very heavy lifting here – bits of metal bolted into the rock) at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. I don’t do stuff and don’t buy souvenirs or gifts. So I’m not interested in a mass produced carving / plastic moulding of the three wise monkeys (I haven’t actually seen these in Nepal yet, but I think it is only a matter of time – I suspect I could pick up a few half way up most mountains and in the forecourts and back alleys around most temples / churches / waterfalls / palaces). Even some of the really beautiful obsidian carvings don’t entice me to own them.

Despite having recently spent 3 years working for one of the most noteworthy museums on the planet (The Natural History Museum in London), I’m not a fan of museums (again, I’m very glad they exist): one person’s artefact is another person’s piece of trash; one man’s historical summary is another person’s cultural erasure – I doubt very much that the stories of the marginalised or underprivileged are faithfully represented in any museum given that they’re often erased from modern records and culture. The people telling the stories, by the very fact that they have this voice, are often not the most marginalised. And even if the story were faithful, how can you summarise the lives of thousands of people over hundreds of years in a few sentences with 5 gold rings, 4 pieces of broken pottery, 3 murals, 2 combs made of bone (for the beard, or the dog, or a horse – uncertain), 1 guess at a sewage system and a partridge in a pear tree?

I get really annoyed by the ridiculously overt opulence of palatial and religious buildings – especially in the midst of grinding poverty (I completely freaked out in the Vatican given the beggars on the streets and the gold leaf in St Peters – there’s a message in the Bible somewhere about where two or three are gathered in my name there shall I be, and ask and you shall receive – I guess someone forgot that bit when they decided the church buildings had to be kept obscenely rich and the people kept obscenely poor). It’s not just Catholicism, every religion does it to some extent (in Sri Lankan Buddhism you gain more merit for giving alms to the monks than for giving alms to the poor – I bet it wasn’t the poor who wrote that rule) and royal families are notorious for it. I remember the name of the relevant king / saint and the reason why he was loved / loathed (or both) and why he was deposed / killed (or both) for about 5 minutes then I forget them. Yep, really terrible tourist.

However, I’m a great traveller. I love buses and trains and tuk tuks. I love walking through the streets of a city and being confused and stunned and intrigued by the shops, the people, the transport, the infrastructure, the electrical cables, the footpaths, the sights, the smells, the food, the hilarious shop names, the sounds. I love mountain roads and paddy field vistas. I love coffee shops. I love sitting in parks and reading books about the place I’m in or about other places entirely. I love living with local families and working out how to use the facilities and how to eat the food – if you can sleep, eat and wash in this place then so can I, but I might need a few pointers on how to manage it (the secret to outdoor bathing is two sarongs – one to get wet in and the second dry one to wrap around yourself so you can remove the wet one and then dry yourself – drying yourself under a wet sarong is a mug’s game). I love how something that is utterly essential in one context is completely absent in another (basin and tap in dining areas in Sri Lanka; toilet paper; piped running water; etc). I love the things that are ubiquitous (coffee). I love the things that are ubiquitous, but are actually completely different in one place from another – tea (Black / green / white / oolong / jasmine / herbal? Milk? Sugar? Nestomalt? Lemon? Bubble? Strong / weak? Hot / cold? Spiced? In a tiny metal cup with no handles the approximate temperature of the centre of the earth? In a glass / mug / china teacup? With a saucer? With sugar in the palm of the hand so you can lick the sugar before taking a mouthful of tea? In a pot (glass, ceramic, plastic, metal)?).

I love the different smells in the air. I love the trees (and the cities that don’t have trees – they are very disconcerting for a few days before I put my finger on the lack of green stuff). I love how sanitised and anodyne and pristine and unlived-in some places are. I love how teeming with all manner of life against all the odds some other places are. I love the distance and the closeness. I love that there is always someone sweeping in Sri Lanka. I love the beaches that are full of dirty. I love that if you’ve only got four people on a motor bike you’re just not trying hard enough. I love the ox carts and the barrows that people push. I love the insane cyclists in Rwanda holding on to the back bumper of the trucks as they take them up (and down) the hills. I love the trains and busses and jeeps and three wheelers and rickshaws.

I love writing journals or blog posts or messages to friends that help me to process and understand what is happening to me and what is happening around me (the good, the bad and the desperately upsetting). I love reflecting and learning and sharing and experiencing.

And most of all, I love travelling to be part of a community – if only peripherally – where I can share my talents, my enthusiasm, my curiosity. Where I can teach some English or maths or Excel, try to learn some of the local language, build a school. Where my life can be touched by the lives of others who are completely different and yet exactly the same and where I can touch their lives in return.

We’re all the same you know – below the surface, behind the tea – however you take it.