A Taste of Travel

As soon as I emerged from the husk of plane, the sultry air spiced with incense tickled my nose. Stepping onto the tarmac, I could not yet see a single tendril of smoke slithering up from the many offerings left outside shops and homes, but I felt it like ozone, wrapping me in an embrace of sticky scent. Metallic bells tinged in the hot breeze—the distant notes of Gamelan, a traditional Indonesian ensemble of mainly bronze percussion instruments. So this is Bali, I thought.

Besides being home to some of the coolest souvenirs I ever gifted, such as intricate bone carvings that both my friends Sal and Eli independently managed to chip despite my having kept them intact on a 28 hour flight (just saying, guys), Bali is a tropical island that was originally inhabited around 2000 BCE. The island is predominantly Hindu, in stark contrast to mainly Islamic Indonesia, of which Bali is a province.

What brought me to this piece of South Pacific paradise? Naturally the obvious answers of sun, sand, and surf were attractive. So too was the island’s close proximity to my home for the next several months in Perth, Australia. [Be sure to check out my Australia photo gallery]. Near the top of the list was the fact that the holiday was student budget-friendly. But what made me take this trip outside of Australia while there was still so much of Australia for me to see?

The answer is, living even for a short time in Australia had given me a taste of the world beyond my every day, familiar experience, and it left me hungry for more. When I first moved abroad in 1997 I was an inexperienced 21-year old wanting to see some of the world before settling down into a career. I naively thought that my journey would end when my flight returned home. Little did I know that this was merely the first of many flights; my journey still continues to this day nearly two decades later. Being home is merely an extended layover.

On the surface, we all travel for different reasons. I didn’t want to measure my life out in, as T. S. Eliot wrote, coffee spoons. Speaking on the effects of travel, the British bard also said “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

I think T.S. Eliot hit on a great universal truth with those words. I never see my home as clearly as I do when showing it to visitors from abroad. I think that’s the case for all of us. In truth though, our view of our home changes after our first trip. It comes into greater focus even if we never play host or tour guide to visitors. We, therefore, travel not only so that we can know more of the world, but so that we can know ourselves and our homes.

Living abroad I awoke to a sense of cultural malnourishment and, for the first time, felt real hunger pangs. For me, each new city or new country served as the next course in a feast that quelled, but never killed, those pangs. That’s why I took that short three-hour flight from Western Australia to Bali, Indonesia. I did it because I could. I did it because it was there. I did it because I had had a taste of travel and new cultures and I was hungry for more.

No matter where your travels take you, I hope you savor every mile.

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Be sure to check out my Bali gallery for photos of this amazing place.