Next week I shall visit my 50th country. Okay, okay, that’s including Palestine, the Vatican City and, er, Transdniestria. But my point is: however much carbon-offsetting I pay for, I cannot pretend that my environmental impact on our planet has been anything other than appalling. I have flown, and I will fly, a lot.
In my defence, I must say that I hate flying. Yes there are those rare moments when the peaks of the Himalayas glisten and it feels as if they are your own wings spread out above them, or when the waves of the Sahara trace your passage above them and make you forget the salad dressing sachet that you couldn’t tear open and the headphone socket that won’t play stereo sound, and you imagine for a fleeting moment that you and the desert are all that has ever been in the world.
But generally, my legs don’t fit and I won’t know where the lifejacket is however many times I listen and I am a little bit sad about the place that I am leaving (yes, as well as a little bit glad about the place that I’m going – I give you that one, Time of Wonder), and if I allow myself to think of it my heart pounds and I don’t want to die in a plane crash, especially not over an ocean.
I have also become accustomed to the fact that virtually anywhere I fly, I am going to be frickin’ miserable for at least two days after my arrival. Displacement blues, I call it. It has little to do with that little sadness about the place I am leaving; it has a lot to do with being plucked out of one reality, hurtled through the sky and dropped, overly often without any accompanying luggage, into an entirely different reality.
This week, a trip via Eurostar to Paris reminded me of one journey that wasn’t like this. I boarded the same train at St Pancras once before, four and a half years ago: the first leg of an wonderful journey from London to Beijing by train.
Then, I watched the fields of Europe turn into the forests of Siberia turn into the steppe of Mongolia turn into the mountains of China. I listened to languages morph from the familiar into the unknown, and noticed how people as well as places pass from one into another throughout our interconnected world.
It was a bit like when I stopped taking the tube in central London, and began to learn how it all fits together. And it was the same this week, stepping off the train at Gare du Nord, having passed through the spaces and the places that have always lain between these two capital cities.
For me, it’s not that the journey is as important as the destination. It’s that the destination only really makes sense if you understand how you got there.
In my defence, I must say that I hate flying. Yes there are those rare moments when the peaks of the Himalayas glisten and it feels as if they are your own wings spread out above them, or when the waves of the Sahara trace your passage above them and make you forget the salad dressing sachet that you couldn’t tear open and the headphone socket that won’t play stereo sound, and you imagine for a fleeting moment that you and the desert are all that has ever been in the world.
But generally, my legs don’t fit and I won’t know where the lifejacket is however many times I listen and I am a little bit sad about the place that I am leaving (yes, as well as a little bit glad about the place that I’m going – I give you that one, Time of Wonder), and if I allow myself to think of it my heart pounds and I don’t want to die in a plane crash, especially not over an ocean.
I have also become accustomed to the fact that virtually anywhere I fly, I am going to be frickin’ miserable for at least two days after my arrival. Displacement blues, I call it. It has little to do with that little sadness about the place I am leaving; it has a lot to do with being plucked out of one reality, hurtled through the sky and dropped, overly often without any accompanying luggage, into an entirely different reality.
This week, a trip via Eurostar to Paris reminded me of one journey that wasn’t like this. I boarded the same train at St Pancras once before, four and a half years ago: the first leg of an wonderful journey from London to Beijing by train.
Then, I watched the fields of Europe turn into the forests of Siberia turn into the steppe of Mongolia turn into the mountains of China. I listened to languages morph from the familiar into the unknown, and noticed how people as well as places pass from one into another throughout our interconnected world.
It was a bit like when I stopped taking the tube in central London, and began to learn how it all fits together. And it was the same this week, stepping off the train at Gare du Nord, having passed through the spaces and the places that have always lain between these two capital cities.
For me, it’s not that the journey is as important as the destination. It’s that the destination only really makes sense if you understand how you got there.