Ep 11- Life Lessons from travel

Hello and welcome back to Being Meraklis a podcast by Shwetha Sivaraman

If you are tuning in for the first time, Being Meraklis is a podcast about life through my journey of self-discovery. A conversation on life in all its glory with its highs and lows. This podcast is a reminder of how we are not alone in this journey and on the simple things we can do to make this life a memorable and beautiful experience.

Hope you all are having a great start to 2020. The year for me has kicked-off to a brilliant beginning. I have never been filled with more energy, I am almost constantly working but it feels much less like work with every passing day. The break I took from Christmas to New years has invigorated me like no other. The clean-break away from social media helped me look inwards, let go of unnecessary baggage, and chart out what I wanted for myself this year. And, it is amazing what you can achieve once you set your sights to it. I will probably speak about it someday when I am ready, but today I want to touch upon an aspect of life that is very important to me. Travel.

Travel has become an integral part of our lives today. The marketing campaigns of all the tourism boards and the airline industries have worked like a charm, haven’t day? This week I wanted to talk about travel – what travel means to me? Why I love traveling? And the lessons travel has taught me about life and living.

As a kid, growing up in a middle-class family, I remember how big an event the four of us traveling once every year used to be. We visited various parts of India in these escapades. Nothing like a good old family summer vacation to ease us off all the stress of academic years, financial closings and what not. We discussed which destination we would go to months before the vacation. These were after all the times when you had to book IRCTC tickets before they got sold out. Train journeys were simply the best – My sister and I beginning with Tinkles and then eventually graduating to our own genre of novels. Spreading a bedsheet and playing UNO to kill time. Gorging on inane levels of delish snacks and food sold by food sellers walking from one compartment to another. I still remember being paranoid everytime Dad got off the station to buy bottles of water or magazines or food – I always thought he would miss getting back onto the train in time.

Those were truly the days. But the travel bug bit me whole and soul when I had gone on a student exchange program to France – 3 months in Europe. We were four of us from XLRI and so many others from other schools in the same university in Lille, France. I had a chance to explore Europe as a student – carefree, young and in full health- What more could I have asked for? Not to mention I got a chance to get to know my friend then and husband today better. Nothing like travel to bring out the best and worst in an individual.

Traveling as a student is fabulous experience in itself – you have minimalistic expectations, never-ending zeal and fantastic company. As a pure vegetarian and as a student with little money, I used to survive days on just bananas from 7/11. An upgraded meal used to be bread and spread sprinkled with bhujia from India. We could walk with heavy backpacks for kilometers at a stretch just to tick another item off our bucket list. It was a never-ending cycle – beginning with thorough research to plan the trip, make the bookings, travel, and repeat.

Traveling has been an eye-opener for me in so many ways. Traveling as a student gave me much needed perspective. And it has been something I’ve relied on ever since. Irrespective of how taxing my job has been, travel has always been on my agenda. Me and my husband carefully planned leaves to make the most out of 3 week vacations spread out in a year. As I grew older, I started to embrace slow travel. After hectic corporate jobs we soon realized that for travel to be relaxing the pace had to be different from the backpacking days. It was not easy accepting that, being the crazy travellers, we were. But gradually, the need to check experiences off the list was replaced by the urge to slow down breathe a little. It didn’t mean we did not have no experiences, it just meant we took more time to soak up the place rather than jump from one destination to another.

Travel for me has never been about the monuments or the landscapes. Travel was never about the photographs or creating content. Travel is life, it is as vital as oxygen for my survival. I need doses of it, every now and then, to shake things up, to give perspective, to remind me on what really matters.

So here are the lessons I learnt from all my travel experiences: in

-The freedom in Letting Go – We love exercising full control in our lives, and we do that with travel as well – But the best experiences I have had are when I have not planned my travels to the last-minute detail. Right from being locked out of Paris railway station in the middle of the night to discovering the beach town in Southern France in Cerbere just by getting down from the train mid-journey – Ive experienced the best stories worth remembering by stumbling on them purely by chance.

-The Art of Inclusion – Travel exposes you to different cultures, traditions, and practices and makes you visualize a completely different way of life. Immersing oneself in an all-new culture brings about an understanding that no other method of teaching can boast about. Knowledge that comes from visiting countries, tasting different cuisines, experiencing hospitality and learning more about contradicting culture, traditions, and values is priceless. Travel opened up my thoughts, reminding me there is no right way of living.
The more differences I saw, the more commonality I started to find. Travel helps you align to that common heartbeat of humanity irrespective of borders, language, religion, or history.

-The secret of Self-Confidence – Travel is not all rosy, there are several things that can go wrong even in a fully planned travel itinerary. But the unexpected situations teach you more. You learn about who you are and what your strengths are, how you react to unfamiliar situations, and how you can work together to get yourself out of tricky situations with limited resources. The secret to self-confidence is no rocket science, it comes gradually with every challenge you face. Every hurdle crossed, every obstacle overcome. We have been locked down in Koh Samui airport amidst never ending rains and flood like situations and almost missed our flight back home. We have been drenched to the bone with all our winter clothes halfway up the pulpit rock trek in Norway. We have spent hours outside stations during winters in Sweden hoping to catch any train that could keep us warm. We spent a whole weekend in Zagreb with no cash even to buy food when we realized our pre-paid cards were out of cash on a Friday evening – Each experience shattering our comfort zone, putting us to test, pushing us to think on our feet. This made us more and more confident about facing life head-on -dealing with uncertainties, managing unfavourable situations, and in some cases just biting our tongue and tolerating tough situations with no way out.

-And lastly, The power of introspection – Nothing like travel to get you to think deeply. A change in scenery or being close to nature can help you introspect, find what you value the most. WE spend a lot of time looking for answers in the outside world – in the materialistic things, in relationships with family and loved ones. Travel made me realize that more often than not, the answers were within me – buried just below the surface and waiting to be set free. Travel liberated me, helped me re-invent myself, changed priorities on what really matters in life. Coincidentally a lot of life-changing decisions I’ve made have been amidst traveling, and more so the mountains.
Traveling is a beautiful journey to lose yourself and find a whole new different you if you are open to it.

But, enough about me. I want to hear what you have learnt from your travels? Share your most interesting travel story with me on Instagram @beingmeraklis. I will feature the best ones in my Instagram stories at the end of this week.

As Marcel Proust rightly said “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”
I look forward hearing your perspective and the best travel experiences you have had.

Thank you for tuning in. If you like what you are listening to, join me on this beautifully journey and lead a meraklis life with me on Instagram under the handle @beingmeraklis. I have a lot of amazing content planned and cannot wait to share it with all my listeners.

Lots of Love, this is Shwetha Sivaraman signing out hoping you have the best of weeks ahead.