Why travel is no holiday

There are times when I think the inherent interest of travel is less in the doing than in the having done, that it is more appealing in the past and future tenses than in the present continuous. 'I'm going travelling' sounds brave, intrepid and exciting. They were the words that most motivated me as I struggled to meet deadlines, survived on stodgy canteen fare and stared out of my window at the grey, English sky. 'I've been travelling' has a noble, satisfying ring to it. Perhaps, when I get back to family and friends, Sunday morning fry-ups, Doctor Who and my own bed, those words, and the licence to say them, will be my ultimate reward.

'I am travelling' has entirely different implications. It lacks the finality and the sense of purpose of the previous two. 'Right now' or 'at the moment' might be tacked on the end to emphasise the temporariness, not only of the act of travel itself, but of every single experience that that act encompasses. Travel is a limbo state, when you do not quite belong, when you are not entirely Here but not yet There either. Sometimes, the words 'I am travelling' exhaust me. They make me crave stability and stasis. When you add the word 'alone', as I often do, they take on a subtle hint of sadness.

Sadness is a recurring theme of travel writing, as I am learning. Paul Theroux's anthology The Tao of Travel is full of gobbits from melancholy nomads bemoaning their chosen way of life. In 1807 the Swiss novelist and essayist Madame de Stael described travel as 'one of the saddest pleasures of life'; Theroux himself calls it 'a sad and partly masochistic pleasure.' During the road trip recounted in 'Travels With Charley', John Steinbeck suffered bouts of loneliness, taking solace in occasional visits from his wife Elaine, to whom he subsequently wrote 'I'm glad you came out and it was a good time, wasn't it? It took the blankness off a lot.' And just the other day, on a blog whose name I've forgotten, I came upon a quote from an author whose name I've also forgotten: 'It's not an adventure if you're not miserable.'

When this trip was only an idea, it didn't occur to me that travel might make one sad. I thought it would consist of moment after moment of unbridled joy, wonder and awe - until the week before my departure, when I was convinced it was going to be hellish. The reality, of course, is somewhere in the middle. It follows the emotional trajectory of most other lifestyles: a reasonably smooth continuum of being okay or being fine, peppered here and there with moments of delight, inspiration, excitement, misery, weariness and dissatisfaction. Before this trip, travel was one of the purest forms of happiness I knew. But I realise now that when I thought I was travelling, I was really just going on holiday; novelty and foreignness were a source of delight primarily because they were thrown into relief by the impending return to familiarity and routine. When you adopt travel as a way of life rather than a break from it, you realise that it is not and cannot be immune to the ups and downs and moments of blankness that life invariably presents us with, however happy we consider ourselves.

I recently had a conversation with an American who was on a brief trip to Montreal. It soon came up that I was on an extended backpacking trip, and he expressed his approval.

'But it's hard sometimes, you know?' I said.

'Haha!' he cried. 'First world problems!'

He's right, of course. Part of me is irritated by my inability to appreciate my own immense privilege. I feel I should be grateful for every waking second. But then I cut myself some slack, and tell myself it's okay not to be delighted and amazed and awestruck all the time. It's okay to be just okay. If anything, this experience is a reminder that our tendency to look back fondly on our best-loved memories - and to forget the neutral, uneventful, neither-happy-nor-sad moments that make up the bulk of existence - tricks us into believing that a lasting state of pure happiness is a conceivable and attainable thing. But even the things we idealise and dream about have rough edges when you see them close up.

This doesn't mean I don't like travelling, or that I wish I wasn't doing it. It just means that it is a different experience to the one I was expecting. And quite frankly, so much the better. After all, if I were only happy when travelling and travelling only ever made me happy, how on earth would I be able to go home?


PS. I realise my blog entries of late have been a) few and far between and b) not particularly informative as to what I'm doing and when I'm doing it, and that consequently this blog is less an account of my travels than a mish mash of random anecdotes and not-very-deep reflection. However, I have come to realise that there's really not much point in me describing things for the sake of describing them, because it bores me, and I'm rubbish at it. For the record, I'm in Quebec City, in a nice, friendly hostel in the old town, and I'm about to go exploring. Apologies to those who would like more details, but for now, that's all you're getting.