Of thousand year old roads, magic aircraft doors, shady documents and travelling in COVID times
We had cancelled our tickets to Romania in mid 2020 when the pandemic hit us and a kind of gloom set in. We were like two wildebeest whose annual migration had been blocked. We just lay down and dreamed of green pastures worth crossing crocodile infested rivers for.
Then over a year later, providentially, Spain opened its borders to vaccinated Indians and we felt like prisoners who’d found a crack in the prison wall with the guards asleep. Neighbouring Portugal didn’t want us or we’d have gone there too. I don’t know what we did to offend them. Maybe evicting them from Goa still rankles?
Our visa still held and we were on one of the first flights to Madrid.
It still thrills me to get on a flight. Some folks like to sleep or watch a movie when the cabin lights are dimmed. I prefer to watch the world drift below me on the screen as the plane, like a low altitude satellite, glides over land and sea and their names float in and out, some familiar, some exotic. It is nothing short of magical to think that man has created a machine that flies at close to supersonic speed and transports you to another world. You board in the dark in Delhi and step out in the sunshine at Madrid. From a crowded, noisy, chaotic land of familiar sounds, smells and habits to a sparsely populated, sea-and-mountain locked land of fast-speaking, light skinned, dark haired people who carry traces of Arab DNA. The aircraft door you realise is really a portal to another universe. And for a little while as you wander in a strange land clutching your passport and visa, you are in someone else’s reality. Maybe that’s the reason we travel, to see what’s on the other side of the horizon, to leave our certainties behind, to risk exposing our ignorance, to have our knowledge and arrogance tested, and if we’re lucky, maybe connect at some level.
We’d first visited Spain about 20 years ago. On that trip we went south from Madrid to Barcelona, Malaga, Cordoba and Seville — by bus and train. This time we went north and clockwise from Madrid and over three weeks visited Salamanca, Leon, Santiago de Compostela, Oviedo, Bilbao, San Sebastian and Burgos. I rented a Citroen C3, a medium-sized car that did justice to the 120 kmph speed limit on highways that sliced through the country. We went over undulating flatlands, through deep tunnels and mist-filled valleys. Over deep gorges, past distant cityscapes and around cliff-side-clinging villages. We skirted the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Biscay and came within touching distance of France.
Everything about the International Driving Permit issued by the Indian road transport authority smacks of a badly forged document — the paper quality, the off-centre staple and the officer’s smudged signature. But happily it’s accepted by the car rental company. I am astonished that I can legally drive a car abroad because inside I’m just another crazed Indian driver with more scratches and dents on my Hyundai Verna than a frequent traveller’s check-in luggage. And when I return the car intact at the end of my vacation I’m think, ‘phew, maybe I’ll live to drive another day.’ And I realise that fake-looking IDP has multiplied the value of the passport.
Midway on our circuit was Santiago de Compostela. For over a thousand years pilgrims have walked the ancient camino, or path, from across Spain and Europe to the cathedral that houses the remains of the apostle James. The tradition continues to this day and I’ve no idea why. It’s definitely not for religious reasons anymore. Maybe humans just like traditions and stories and are romantics at heart and just can’t let a thousand year old tradition die. Of course we have modernised things a bit. There are shorter routes that you can do, or you can cycle the camino, and the most amazing sight I saw was a group of men and women with special needs on a variety of specially designed pedalling machines. The rest stops along the camino range from the basic to the luxurious. I even heard of a paid service where at the end the day’s walk you would be picked up, taken for a dinner to a fine-dining restaurant and dropped back to rest for the night. You know you are on the camino when you see signs with the distinctive yellow arrows pointing the way to Santiago, which would have been vital in pre-GPS days.
Like roads, language connects, and if you know the local language the foreign can start feeling familiar. I can’t claim to ‘know’ the language but for the last two years I’d been teaching myself Spanish words and phrases (beyond hola, buenos dias and gracias) off and on — I watched Spanish video lessons online, Spanish movies with English subtitles, I read Pablo Neruda’s poems printed in Spanish and English side by side, I listened to CD’s of travel phrases in the car. I had no idea I’d be visiting Spain while doing all this and that I would actually get to practise my new skill so soon. It came in useful at the usual places and situations like when greeting people, ordering food and extra hot coffee, requesting a late check out, asking for directions to the toilet, but the ultimate test was conveying to a Spanish speaking lady on a hospital helpline that we urgently needed our RT-PCR test report by email because our flight home was in less than 24 hours.
Beyond the obvious advantage of understanding and being understood, the other great thing about having a smattering of a foreign language is the connection that you make with the locals. Maybe we are not complete strangers in a foreign land after all, and our differences are really superficial.
Just by keeping my ears open I was astonished to discover similarities between Spanish and Tamil, my mother tongue. Arrozzo and zapata are uncannily close to arisi and chappathu, the words for rice and shoe. I also discovered another common word, mesa, when a waiter directed us to an empty table and I went, ‘hey, that’s the word in Tamil too, mesai.’ The only link I can see between Spain and South India is the Arab connection. While the Arab link with Spain is well known, what’s probably less well known is that they were trading with India centuries ago. Who knows, maybe those Spanish words actually travelled from Chennai via the Arabs.
Often, a few days into your travels and just as you start feeling comfortable in your new surroundings something strange and surprising happens. My wife and I were sitting at an outdoor cafe just off a main square in Oviedo and I was approached by a guy dressed normally (as in, not like a homeless person) who introduced himself as from Israel and if I could spare 50 cents. I instinctively shook my head and he walked away. Why he wanted just 50 cents, and why I refused him the 50 cents I don’t know. I’m not an ungenerous person. It’s one of those inexplicable things that I’ll remember years later, this one with a bit of regret that I didn’t talk to him and find out his story.
The other thing that I’ll remember is our dinner on our last day before we flew back from Madrid. It was not fully dark yet and we walked into a nondescript restaurant, ordered wine and something from the menu. While we waited I noticed a couple of men diagonally across from me sitting across from each other. They were speaking English and I gathered they must have just met, probably having connected on a dating app. One of them had red nail polish and the most beautifully manicured hands I’ve seen on a man. He wore red lipstick and his face was smooth and flawless like I’ve only seen on fashion models and brides. Which was all fine and normal because I consider myself cool and worldly-wise until the men leaned across the table and kissed each other on the lips. Which was when I did a double take because that was a first for me. Maybe I’m not so cool and worldly-wise after all. When we finished dinner and stepped out of the restaurant it was dark and there were tables laid out on the sidewalk and smartly dressed men stood around drinking wine, chatting and smoking. There was much hugging and kissing and there were no women around and I figured we were in a gay neighbourhood. Another first.
I read somewhere that reality is our own creation, that we invent the places we see as much as the books that we read. I like to think of it as getting onto the stage of someone else’s play where for just a little while they allow us to act in their drama.
And when you return home you come a full circle, to your own stage. And you wonder, is this reality we call home also our own creation?
