Choosing to Travel
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
– W.H. Davies
Karan and I sat in the gypsy for a few seconds longer. Our last safari was over. This time, we had not seen a tiger, but that was fine. We had not seen the leopard we had waited so long to see, but that was perfectly all right too. We had not seen the sloth bear munching on mahua flowers, but that was also just fine.
We were going back home from Tadoba, a wildlife sanctuary, and that was what got to us. We had to get back to regular jobs that took up all our time, and that was not all right either.
We clambered out of the gypsy, and washed the red dust of the forest off our bodies. The forest had, as always, welcomed us with dusty smells of nature, which we took back with us when we left. Our faces were red, as were our arms and hair.
Clean city-people once more, we looked through the photographs of nine splendid days in the jungle, and our eyes filled up as we smiled and laughed and remembered.
Karan sighed. “It’s going to be a while before we can do this again.”
Both of us knew that. Work schedules were crazy. Getting leave was difficult. And getting over a week’s leave was impossible.
I did not respond. I looked instead at the magnificent jungle beyond us. I heard the sound of monkeys thrashing about in the trees. I could smell the forest all around me.
When I was about fourteen, I had visited Ranthambore as part of a school study-tour: my group was the only one not to see a tiger.
We went to Kanha not very long ago, and did three safaris into the forest. We saw wild boars, deer, birds, monkeys and beautiful trees – but no tiger.
The following year, we went to Nagarhole and did three safaris there. We saw the Giant Malabar Squirrel; we saw elephants – magnificent tuskers; we saw wild dogs and thousands of birds. But no tiger.
We waited another year before going to Tadoba, and we did eight safaris there. Finally, during our third safari, we saw a tiger. We saw crocodiles mating. We saw a pack of wild dogs approaching us. We watched a sloth bear for half an hour, eating to its heart’s content. We wanted more.
“What if …” I began. It was heart-wrenching to think that we would have to wait another year before we got the chance to visit a forest again.
Karan’s eyes met mine. It was a crazy idea, a mad, terrifying idea. But our hearts beat faster at what we could do if …
“What if we work on our own?” Karan voiced my thoughts. “You’re a writer; I am a photographer, though still an amateur. We could travel together.”
“It’ll earn us nothing,” I said.
“But that’s not the only skill we have. I could set up on my own, and develop and design websites; I did yours after all!”
My breath trembled as I breathed in the clean evening air. The leaves rustled around us, a chital cried out a warning call in the distance. A tiger was nearby, it was telling us. The wild, wild world was nearby.
“We could …” A seed of doubt was still in me. “But …”
“But what?”
I did not reply.
“We can work on our own terms; we can travel where we like; we can work from anywhere in the world!”
“And we don’t need to think about taking leave,” I said, a tentative smile creeping onto my face. “We don’t need to think about the single week that we will get each year.”
“And we can do what we want,” said Karan, triumphantly.
I grinned. We wanted that. We wanted that more than anything in the world.
And that is how the wild, wild jungle made us make a wild, wild decision. We don’t yet know if it was brave or naïve. The way I see it, the world will let us know soon enough. Until then, we travel.
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