by Chandramohan Nair
Chandramohan Nair muses on the life-enriching nature of journeys without a destination as epitomised by the unusual sailing voyage of an Australian linguist.
Sometime in 2001, I had entered an essay competition run jointly by the Economist and Royal Dutch Shell to encourage thinking and debate about the future of travel. The title of the essay was “Going faster – but where?” I was attracted by the topic, the marquee names of the sponsors and the not inconsiderable first prize of twenty thousand dollars. Although it was right in the middle of the dot-com bust, the hype around technology continued to be strong, and in my essay set in 2014 – a year which appeared eons away in terms of the progress of technology – I bravely prophesied a bleak future for the travel industry. The gist of my piece was that the majority of employees would telecommute, business travel would reduce dramatically thanks to audio and videoconferencing and people would travel predominantly for leisure or religious reasons. Disappointingly, my technology-laden vision of the future did not enthuse the judging panel.
The prize winning entry was from Mari Rhydwen, an Australian linguist specializing in aboriginal languages. In a delightfully written and insightful essay titled “A Ramble to Africa,” she dwelt upon the two years she spent sailing, along with her husband, from Western Australia to Africa. They had given up their jobs, sold their home, bought a yacht and set sail without any particular destination or timeline in mind. They were driven by a desire to get away from the stress of a hyperactive, goal-oriented life and experience life at a snail’s pace, one day at a time. She wrote eloquently about mingling with local people at a serendipitously chosen port of call, witnessing the miracle of sunrise each morning, savouring the tranquillity of the ocean miles away from civilisation or snorkelling through unspoilt reef off the idyllic Chagos islands. Just as intensely as she experienced the highs so did she feel the lows – the strain of manning the midnight to six o’clock watch day after day, hours spent collecting well-water at some remote island and the loneliness that sets in after weeks away from habitation that made her grateful for the company of the seabirds that sheltered temporarily on their yacht.
When I run these essays through my mind, I am struck by the very different connotations that were attributed to the notion of travel in them.
I had looked at travel simply as a means of reaching a destination – a utilitarian undertaking where comfort and punctuality were valued. Much of my travels fell in this category and if at all I remember specific instances of such journeys it would probably be on account of some unpleasantness faced or hardship endured.
For Rhydwen the journey was an end in itself. There was no predetermined destination or itinerary. It was a voyage of self-discovery and of just being oneself, free from the shackles of to-do lists to be ticked off and deadlines to be met. To put it in her own words, ‘Some of us have loosened our grip on the illusion of security and given up homes and jobs to travel the oceans for a while and just see what happens. It is not a way of getting anywhere. It is a way of being wherever you are.’
While the differences between the utilitarian travel experience that I had described and the life-changing journey of the kind Rhydwen undertook are obvious, there is the intriguing question of what accounts for the attraction of sailing for such ventures of self-discovery.
The allure of sailing appears to have multiple dimensions with the first being the change in perspective that it provides.
I can relate somewhat to this aspect having experienced some long sea voyages during my boyhood. The last of these was in 1969 when we boarded the beautiful MS Victoria, owned by the reputed Trieste-based shipping company Lloyd Triestino, on a forty-day journey from Genoa to Bombay. The Suez Canal had been closed after the Six-Day War of 1967 and we had to take the long route around the west coast of Africa.
During the first week of the voyage we hardly noticed the sea as there were exciting port of calls – Barcelona with its palm tree lined avenues, rocky Gibraltar and sun-soaked Tenerife – on almost every alternate day. Moreover, we children were excitedly exploring what appeared to be a floating wonderland with its promenade decks, swimming pools, restaurants and countless vantage points.
Our next port of call – Cape Town – was a good ten days away. It took just a few days of gazing at the endless stretch of ocean in all directions for our minds to transition to a different world in which our earthly concerns figured very faintly. Our lives are so overwhelmingly land-based – ironical if one considers that life originated in the oceans – that being out at sea provides a much-needed change in our perpective towards life. Perhaps, the change is on account of the physical distancing from land and the novelty of a unique sensory experience in which the other four elements of nature – water, sun, air and space- come to the fore. Each morning we would eagerly rush out of our claustrophobic cabins and race to the deck to take in the splendour of the rising sun amidst the varying hues of an infinite sky, breathe in the salty ocean air and listen to the swish of the waves against the hull.
The second is the thrill of adventure. Sailing requires the mind and the body to be constantly alert and alive to the demands of both the vessel and the elements. While much of one’s time is spent absorbed in the nitty-gritty of keeping the sailing boat ship-shape, conditions at sea can change suddenly and unexpectedly and at such times one has to depend on one’s primal adrenaline rush to survive. During stormy weather, even aboard a thirteen-thousand-ton ocean liner, the violent churning of the ocean waters would fill me with trepidation so I can well imagine the emotions felt by sailors on a tiny yacht.
Finally, sailing by its very nature is meandering, dependent as it is upon the vagaries of the wind and the weather. The mind is freed from its preoccupation with reaching a destination and during the hours when the ocean is sedate and the weather clement there is plenty of time to reflect in solitude and unravel the knots in one’s lives. Plenty of time also to live in the present in communion with nature.
However, only a handful of people may be able to embark on a journey such as Rhydwen’s. Financial and other circumstances aside, most of us will not be able to summon the audacity to take such a disruptive decision.
So, are there other modes of travel that can provide an experience similar to that of sailing?
Recreations such as a leisurely lakeside walk, a gentle trek or a long walk along a nature trail can allow us to experience some of the rewards, such as a sense of calm and closeness to nature, that sailing provides but those rewards may not come as easily as our minds, left to their own volition, are so task- and time-oriented that we may find it difficult to let go of our preoccupations for any length of time. But it is a matter of changing one’s attitude to life and retraining the mind. I can still recollect the calming influence exerted by the waters of the picturesque Hussain Sagar lake while on a leisurely walk, munching on some roasted mungfali, along the Tank Bund Road in Hyderabad. Those were days in my twenties when I was short on cash and worries, but always seemed to have plenty of time on hand.
In fact, to build on a thought from Rhydwen, if we can look at life as a journey, we may discover that even the occasional rambling, loitering, idling or meandering – activities that would be considered unwholesome and unhealthy in our achievement-oriented world and that would instantly label their practitioners as losers in life – can be of great therapeutic value and help restore some balance to our frenetic existence.
Chandramohan Nair lives in Kochi and has taken up writing after a career in the banking and technology sectors.
