Deserted road on Tierra del Fuego

For me the whole point of travel is to leave yourself behind, to leave your assumptions behind, to become cleared out and to step into another person.

–Pico Iyer

Sometimes I have to wonder what kind of rock I live under.  I mean, really!  Despite my peripatetic lifestyle I seem to be strangely illiterate in “travel writer” terms.  Busy “doing” perhaps?  Perhaps.

So when I received an email from Diwia with a video link and the short note: “Great listening Amie, watch the first 15 mins – you’ll be hooked to the very end”.  I clicked with the clear mind of the uninitiated.

So I sat by my computer, listening, watching, as dusk fell over Cochin and the time of the mosquitoes came and went, with windows still wide open, feeling the throat tightening I get when I respond emotionally to something I see or read.  It didn’t matter that the video was long. Nor did it matter that I was now sitting in the dark, with dinner yet to be made.

I sat thinking about why I travel, about why I don’t have a rooted place, about where I might be going next and why, and I sat thinking, wishing in fact, that I could come even close to describing those thoughts and feelings to others.

“It’s amazing what a positive act of silence can bring to your life…”… that, and a friend who knows what will hook you.