Multifaceted Obsession

On the bus to Ikea today (domestic waves of Genius are in the making here!) the almost banal thoughts of travel crept upon me. I really do love public transport; I even enjoy the waiting part, and traffic never bothers me. So, sitting on the top deck, I lounged in the back-of-bus breeze and watched the fields roll by in true English Summer glory – the stuff of childhood Middle-Earthen dreams, of baked school breaks, of strawberries and elderflowers and flasks of ginger beer. Gulping at my Cherry coke, the fresh-mixed cola syrups of the States flashed across my mind, truck-stop meals and vending machine breaks as clear as on road-trip day itself. For hours with every trip, I soared along the highway in the best of company. And always, even amidst the worst of times, the world intrinsically was right. Right there, on the 219 through Gildersome, I longed to travel back to that again; rolling each journey into one, so I could be with everyone again.

With typical impulsive thought as we rounded a corner, my beverage pulled me to another, separate thought, to the upstream Express Boat journey in Sarawak last year. A full day’s travel in a sort of floating, wingless plane, filled with those for whom, like me, it was a novel way to move, even though it was their own domain. The sun beat through our mini-windows and radiated from the metal walls, and although I longed to join the men up on the roof, I soon sank into prodigious bliss. It didn’t take long for the novelty of 10 farangs upon the boat to disappear, and the on-screen boxing match, or long-unseen relations’ tales to take precedence over this small invasion. Fading into comfortable imperceptibility, I swept from a conversation with my crew to a slightly comical exchange with a man of 50 (at a guess) sitting across the aisle. From introduction onwards, we waded through English, with whatever little Malay I could muster from my cowards memory, or find within my phrasebook before the moment passed. It took quite a lot of gestures, patient pauses, and much to the boat’s amusement, the help of a the gentleman’s companions, one of similar age, and a boy of 4 or 5. The man returned home after 9 months in the city, bringing back a prize worth more than the wages he’d sent back; a refrigerator and a crate of stout - further up the river, several such crates were hauled, without a passenger onto docking bays of other homes, for the express served also as carriage for important goods. At one stop, a crate slipped from the hands of the crew, and for one horrific moment, as the Express passengers watched and shouted, and the young man at the bay froze in shock, his long-awaited beer floated back from whence it came. Redemption sprang from a quick thinking man upon the roof, yanking a heavy switch from an overhanging tree, lunging clumsily towards the box, and by pure chance, catching the hole atop it, then dragging on it with just enough force to stay the current’s persuasive pull whilst the crew dashed in and hauled it out, applauded by spectators gripped by said events – and a warm reception awaited him, a 3 day party, for in his absence, a baby boy was born unto his eldest sister. This small exchange, along with obligatory sentences of my home (no, I didn’t live with my family, and no, I was not married), where the group was travelling, and how much I loved his homeland, took the best part of half an hour. I twisted in my seat to introduce him to H, but she was deep in slumber, and by the time she awoke, he had gone.

As we stopped at the final town along the way, switching our luggage from one Express to another, going our way, I was steeped in contentment. I know it was only surface conversation, but at the time, it was so real, so big. And as my companions stretched and groaned, flustered from their stationary state, I felt more alive and rested than I’d felt forever. And I knew, right then that I had to do it properly, to travel, using every means I can, to meet a thousand people and to know them as friends, to get lost in other cultures – really lost – emerging in a different place, perhaps no longer me.