In betweening
I'm off to Senegal and the Gambia in a week, my first visit to West Africa in mumblemumble -- OK, fine, sixteen -- years. I'm curious what it will be like, but also, surprisingly for really-not-particularly-introspective me, what I will be like.
For a considerable period of my life, travel to faraway and slightly sketchy non-First-World places was the activity which occupied most of my disposable time and much of my disposable money. (Not "most" of the latter because I travel cheap; as Neil Young once said, "the ride is rougher, but you meet more interesting people.")
And then, about five years ago, I realized that I was growing bored of it. The places I went kept seeming more and more like one another -- open question how much of that was modernity/globalization/homegenization, and how much was eye-of-the-aging-and-jaded-beholder -- and even the ones that were unique were less thrilling than those of yore. So nowadays I go once or twice a year, for a couple of weeks at a time.
I don't really make plans any more. For the last few trips I haven't even bought guidebooks; not out of some perverse pride in their lack, but because I just never got around to it. Instead I just turn up and follow my whim. (This is easier, of course, when you're good at travel, which is very much a skill. By dint of long practice I have become quite adept.)
So now I'm a little curious: where will my whim take me in Senegambia? Both have cushy resorts along the coast, frequented by the French and English accordingly, with diving and palm trees and (presumably) coconuts and pina coladas. Will I spend a shocking-to-the-young-me amount of time lazing there? Or will I find myself crammed into beat-up mini-taxis, taking all-day rides along bad roads to baked wasteland towns in the country's interior? Or will I spend nearly all of my trip exploring the myriad streets of sprawling Dakar?
The suspense, it is mildly itching me.
(And another factor is this new novel slowly gestating inside my head. Travel is traditionally, for me, in part a ritual performed before book-writing begins.)
For a considerable period of my life, travel to faraway and slightly sketchy non-First-World places was the activity which occupied most of my disposable time and much of my disposable money. (Not "most" of the latter because I travel cheap; as Neil Young once said, "the ride is rougher, but you meet more interesting people.")
And then, about five years ago, I realized that I was growing bored of it. The places I went kept seeming more and more like one another -- open question how much of that was modernity/globalization/homegenization, and how much was eye-of-the-aging-and-jaded-beholder -- and even the ones that were unique were less thrilling than those of yore. So nowadays I go once or twice a year, for a couple of weeks at a time.
I don't really make plans any more. For the last few trips I haven't even bought guidebooks; not out of some perverse pride in their lack, but because I just never got around to it. Instead I just turn up and follow my whim. (This is easier, of course, when you're good at travel, which is very much a skill. By dint of long practice I have become quite adept.)
So now I'm a little curious: where will my whim take me in Senegambia? Both have cushy resorts along the coast, frequented by the French and English accordingly, with diving and palm trees and (presumably) coconuts and pina coladas. Will I spend a shocking-to-the-young-me amount of time lazing there? Or will I find myself crammed into beat-up mini-taxis, taking all-day rides along bad roads to baked wasteland towns in the country's interior? Or will I spend nearly all of my trip exploring the myriad streets of sprawling Dakar?
The suspense, it is mildly itching me.
(And another factor is this new novel slowly gestating inside my head. Travel is traditionally, for me, in part a ritual performed before book-writing begins.)