The Pensive Traveller - Folk You Meet Along The Way
This week our whimsical wanderer muses on travelling companions old and new.
It was late afternoon. I was sitting on the terrace of my hostel on the outskirts of a small village in the north of Bali, sipping from a bottle of beer and listening to the cicadas warming up for their evening chorus. A man coming up the road caught my eye. He was clad in the normal traveller garb - baggy hessian trousers, old t-shirt and a cowry shell hanging from a leather cord around his neck - and I almost didn’t look at him twice. Then, as he approached, I recognised him.
“Sam?”
I couldn’t believe it. Laughing as we embraced, I remembered how we’d shared a room in a Delhi hostel back in 2004. He’d had to leave early so we never exchanged numbers. What were the chances of us ever meeting again? But here we both were in a remote part of Indonesia. I guess with world travel being so easy nowadays it’s not so strange that old friends should meet along the well-worn routes, but even still it made me sit back and take stock.
As Sam and I reminisced over dinner that night we both agreed that the people you meet along the way are the main reason we travel. Sure, the temples, jungles and cities of the world are attractive in themselves, but it’s the people who make it special.
After a brief spell staying in hotels around the world I realised that hostels are more my thing. In one backstreet auberge in Budapest I met a man who was travelling from London to Shanghai over land. Last Easter in Rome I joined the hostel owner for a lavish lunch spread with his entire family - you just don’t get that in the Hilton.
Facebook means that you don’t have to lose touch with your new-found friends once you part company. And who knows, it’s such a small world that you might just end up meeting them again.
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