Re-entry

It seemed a lifetime later, though it was really only about a year, when I boarded my flight home, with as much anticipation about arriving as I had about leaving. I hadn’t counted on the world being so fascinating, so beautiful and scary, so addictive. In short, I hadn’t expected to love the anarchy of travelling as much as I did. I left a planner and came back a traveller.

As I thought back over the entire year, I realised that the moments that epitomised my trip, that I looked on with fond memories, were ones I could never have captured in photographs, that I couldn’t hand over to a fellow traveller with a phone number and instructions on how to book. When I looked at advertisements in travel agency windows and smiled, saying ‘I’ve been there’, it didn’t so much remind me of looking at the pyramids themselves, for example, as when we all threw ourselves into the Nile on inflatable toys and felt the sun on our faces and the cool water on our feet. Or when I sat next to a praying nun looking up at heavenly art in St Peters Basilica, or viewed sunset over the Greek islands, or saw the majestic Lion rest after a kill on the Masai Mara.

Surprising then, that I settled into life fairly quickly after arriving back in Sydney. I found myself a great job in PR in the tourism industry, and worked on getting the new house and a few other things on my list.

There was a second list though – 4W-driving through the Australian outback, trekking Maccu Pichu and the Grand Canyon, Irish pubs, the famous Trans-Mongolian railway, Michaelangelo’s David, the streets of Prague and the city of New York…true, I wouldn’t be able to do them in a year, but I would try for a lifetime.

-Sarah