How do you decide on the amount of time you want to spend in a place you have never been to?How much time is enough time? These are probably the most common questions that everyone faces when planning a trip, and I am sure the traveler in each of us has his/her very own solution. Or if you are like me, you probably don't know what your traveling style and pace is and the only way is to go on a few trips and find out. Even after a decent bit of traveling in the last couple of years, I haven't found my pace yet, but one thing I learnt for sure is that there is never enough time. There will always be places that you will miss or places where you can't spend as much time as you want to. This realization has made me sensitive to one aspect that I grossly ignore in my daily life - the quality of time.
When you know that you only have limited time at a place you really like, you would want to at least make the best of it. For this reason, when traveling, I am under a constant pressure to make the most of my time. Also, at any moment there is usually a lot going in my head and I greatly cherish the moments when the chaos in there calms down and I am, even if partially, able to live in the moment. Quoting from the movie American Beauty 'Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in'. There really have been places where I felt that I need to put all my senses and soul into just taking all the beauty around me in and into just living those moments to the fullest. Places that make you feel there isn't anywhere else in the world you would rather be. Living in the moment is hard, but I do try my best to immortalize these moments in my head. I become super sensitive to the environment around me. The smell and the sounds, the weather and the wind, the colour of the sky, the people, every big and small detail around and most importantly the feeling that I have then, I try to take a note of and remember all these things. While places like Sagrada Familia,Trolltunga/Preikestolen/Kjerag always inspire such moments with their grand beauty,some really simple places/things too do the same to me. Like just walking in the streets of Barcelona enjoying the sun or sitting at the plazas savoring the night's warm breeze or just being there in a city(like Reykjavik, Iceland)that you've never ever imagined yourself in.
I crave for moments like these when I travel. These are the experiences that stay with me for long time even after I come back from my trips. Those little details I try to remember, act as triggers for those happy memories, after which I am usually left with a joyous and content heart.
P.S: This begs for an important question of why am I not so careful about the quality of time in my regular life and why don't I try as hard as I do when I am traveling, to enjoy it better. There is no reason to not to do this and I am working on it.
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