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| Lonavala waterfalls, Maharashtra |
Travel is
addicting, very addicting. And once you get a taste of travelling, like you
step out of your comfort zone and you experience a culture for the first time
and you do things that you've never done before or you learned things you never
even knew existed, that's called real travel, at least that's what I feel about
travelling. You actually meet the locals and get to know them and their culture
and traditions and you kind of become a part of it. Those of you who haven't
been on the road yet, let me warn you, you are going to step into a completely different
world and you’re going to get badly addicted to it. ;)
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| A visit to Della Resorts, Lonavala |
I haven't
been on a really long trip yet, my longest trip so far has been for two months
to Pune. I got an internship at one of the prominent architectural firms in the
US, one of the branches of which is in Pune. For any other person, it would
have been like going to the office in the morning and coming back home late and
then again office in the morning n so on.. But I made it a little more exciting
than it would have been otherwise. After the office, I would go out to explore
the city, culture, dine at different restaurants, trying the traditional Maharastrian
food, meet new people, ride a bike to Lonavala at 2am which is approx 60 kms
from Pune in that chilled weather and all that madness sometimes on my own and
sometimes along with a friend and when I felt I no longer have any energy left
to go any further, I'd return back home. I would go to Bombay on the weekends
and roam around the city with friends, explore markets, and experience new
things. I had the craziest time while I was there. There was this one time when
I, along with a couple of friends went to Juhu and it started raining cats and
dogs. We got drenched head to toe in water and when we entered a restaurant to
grab something to eat, the manager wouldn’t let us sit on the couch because our
clothes were wet and he had to get us huge plastic bags to sit on. People around
us were looking and we were laughing our asses off. It was one of the most
memorable trips I've had so far.
It was the longest time that I've had actually been away from home. A couple of weeks before I was going to return from that trip, I was excited. I was excited to see my family and friends and sleep in my bed again and open my closet and see more than two tops and one pair of jeans and do my hair and little things like that. I was also sad because my trip was coming to an end, but I was excited to take the next step in my life.
It was
really nice to come back home and be able to sleep in a clean, comfortable bed
and to be in a place that was so familiar to me. But at the same time, it was
so foreign to me all of a sudden. It was really weird and it wasn't like
anything I had expected and I felt out of place. I was out for two months and I
had experienced so many new things that I never experienced before. But all of
a sudden I felt that sense of emptiness, felt sad and depressed. When you
travel, you grow really fast. You learn things about yourself that you never
knew before, you know your likes and dislikes. What you liked before, all of a
sudden you dislike it and relationships change because of it. You'll find that
you could be gone for two months and feel like what you learned is a lifetime
worth of things. And then you come back home and find that everything is just
the same as it was before you left. That is what affects you. That's because
you come back and you feel like a changed person but everyone around is exactly
the same. How can they understand what you just went through? That's when you
feel like you're alone and no one really understands you and you feel sad.
That's why it’s good to connect with people who have experienced a similar situation
and who really understand what you have gone through and it would definitely
make you feel better. But it is important for you to know that you've gone
through a life transformation. You may not notice it while you're
travelling, but you'll definitely notice when you come back home and that's
something you might not be prepared for. No one's prepared for it. I thought
because I had travelled previously many times, that I'd be fine going away for
two months and coming back and getting back into society, but I could have
never expected to go through what I went through after coming back from Pune.
The emotions that came with it was something very unpredictable.
I had
read somewhere that it takes the time that you've been gone plus half of that
in order to start to feel normal. You can never feel normal once you've seen
other parts of the world. You're never the same person you used to be. Once you
step out, you experience new things and see the world in a completely different
way, so when you're back home, you want to leave again.
I felt
depressed and it was really hard to deal with it because I didn't really
understand why I was feeling that way. Wasn't I supposed to feel good and
excited about the next chapter in my life? I didn't even wanna talk about that
trip anymore with people. But everyone goes through a similar situation when
they travel. I remember when I travelled alone for the very first time to
Orissa, after returning back home, it was the most difficult time in my entire
life to adapt to the same old environment and people. This time, it’s a little
less, because I know it has to happen and it will happen, so let time do its
trick. The only way to deal with it is to accept it and embrace it. It was hard,
but I tried to get over it and I succeeded. If I can do it, so can you. Just be
proud of yourself that you took this plunge to step out of the little box
you've been living your entire life in and you opened yourself up to this
massive world. And it’s okay to feel sad or depressed or out of the place. The
more you travel, the more you understand and less you feel sad.
Xoxo
<3
