I gave up on trying to see all things when I visit a place. For many years I considered each holiday as a kind of treasure hunt. I would get to the new city with a color-coded map and notebook, list of “must-sees, ” and the quiet anxiety that if I skipped even one renowned museum or square, the whole trip would be somehow imperfect. I would be running all the time from one monument to another, checking the items off the list and capturing snapshots as per the tourist handbook, and then leave with the sense of an emptiness I could not explain. The locales would all blur one another, the cuisine would be bland because I used to scarf down my meals while on foot. Finally, I would be back home, tired and carrying a lot of proof of my having visited through a camera lens but almost nothing about how it felt.
Eventually I decided this was the right way. I had planned to leave after an hour or so in an unremarkable seaside town on one occasion, but I was just walking past the bench, I stopped and had a seat overlooking the waterfront and ended up not going anywhere at all. I simply admired how the light was reflected off the water, listened to a gentleman in his old age debating with a fisherman for no other reason than the joy of it, and ordered another cup of coffee so that I could take the whole evening at leisure. I was not in for anything out of the ordinary and yet that single leisurely day is so much clearer to me than frantic weeks of sightseeing. At that moment it struck me that I was gathering up the places rather than getting into the spirit of them.
Today, I get around with less ambition and loads more mindfulness. I pick a couple of neighborhoods at most and then walk them until it feels natural. I go to get my coffees early for several days to a same shop and So the barista starts recognizing me as someone. I am not rushing myself all day but also do not know what it is that will appear if i am always running towards the next attraction. Sometimes it happens to be a chance conversation. Other times it is as if getting to the point of just sitting still in a place not your own has an effect. The famous spots of course, are still around in case of a change of heart, but now, they are no longer a factor in the way a day is built. Oddly enough, this change has resulted in me seeing more things, not fewer of them.
I have started getting a different feel of my visits. One of the things I learned is when a city becomes more than just a bunch of sites where the fun is ticking things off as you go. It’s then that you begin to discover that you have been shown the hidden facets like how certain light of a particular colour is cast on the ground at a particular location in the evening or how people are living their lives in the street, the small gestures that add to the atmosphere, etc. This whole transformation is what has got my traveling style really kicking off. Instead of getting to enjoy only those things which are at the top of the list for the place as one normally does, I am getting more of an out-of-the-way sort of enjoyment.
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