The Art of Travel
To travel is to live, travelling is one of the most enduring experience that can enrich you on personal and spiritual level.
Expectations
It is really important to travel with no expectations, I believe the less you know about a country the less your expectations will be disattended and the more exciting and surprising the jurney will be; I also believe travelling is not about seeing places such as monuments, or landscapes or curches or ruins, or mountains,in fact travelling is indeed all about getting to meet people and getting to know their daily life in the country you are visting, to me this is the only real added value to a trip, else a trip can be otherwise easily replaced by a TV program that shows you a different country.
The Absence
I usually travel on my own, when I travel I do not consider myself on "holiday" I indeed consider myself on vacation, this term comes from VACATIO, that in the latin language means "ABSENCE" in fact I try to be as much "ABSENT" as I can from my own country and my own culture, for me this is the only way to truely experience the difference in cultures, to learn a bit of the language despite spending only few weeks in the country, to really see which are the issues of a country, or to deeply understand the otherwise unexplainable happiness of certain populations, or the conditions of extreme poverty of some others, or to appreciate differences in religions or differences in lifestyles.
The Souvenirs
From any of my trips I try to bring something with me, but really rarely I bring souvenirs or take pictures of landscapes; I do not see the point of taking a photo of myself with the Pyramids as background; what I try to take with me is a view point, a new way to look upon life, memories of a chat with a random person in the street or simply a habit that will stay with me for my life ( Since I am back from India I do my home made Yogurt, and every morning I remember the cold humid mornings in Rishikesh where I was having breakfast with Honey-bananas-curd).
The Notes
I also have a Moleskin where I take notes of the most unusual things that come under my eyes, from apparently irrelevant things ( for istance in Central america, in some countries they are so poor that when you buy a drink from a street seller, they can not afford to give you a plastic glass, they therefore put the drink in a plastic bag, do a knot, put a straw in it and give it to you) to summaries of conversations I have with people ( In Jordan I took note on how much would it cost to arrange a wedding in a Bedouin family).
I will try to post some of my notes on this website very soon.
And I will continue to travel, until I will feel the need to understand mankind, until I will feel the need to understand myself.
PHOTOSHOW TITLE: PEOPLE
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