Wander off the beaten track
By Mohinder Singh

"Most of the interesting things are found when we wander off the path."

Pico Iyer, Falling Off the Map

SOME people take pride in being well-organised travellers. They book their tickets (window seats, if not the ones with extra legroom) and hotel rooms two months in advance, even pack their suitcases two days before the journey. In their meticulous planning of a trip, little is left to chance.

Others go a step further; they opt for packaged group tours. Here everything — travel arrangements, hotels, luggage handling, local transport, sightseeing, entertainment, even meals — is scheduled and managed by the travel agency. Indeed holiday organisers make most of their money from such travellers. As for group members themselves, they often end up interacting more with one another than with local people.

To many a holiday-maker, the best value for money is to pack the trip with maximum possible sightseeing and other standard activities of a tourist circuit. They are busily shuttling from one well-known tourist spot to another. In this race, they usually end up enervated and miss out the joy of the journey. The more we try, the more we lose sight of what we’re looking for.

One of the ironies of travel is that we often get more mileage out of it when we have no fixed objectives. As we let go of the strait-jacket of schedules and destinations, the prizes multiply in the shape of kaleidoscopic images and encounters. Nothing wrong with having a broad plan, but an obsession with objectives, such as "doing" the recommended sites, can turn your travel into notch-on-the-belt affair.

Engaged wandering is the root of all exploration, leading to new experiences and new knowledge. The process starts from early childhood with childhood browsings. And wandering has been a time-honoured route to wisdom in our culture. In a way, wandering is mobile meditation. When you’re going nowhere, everything is interesting. The joy of travel is in the wandering.

During our four-day stay in picturesque Prague, a scheduled sightseeing tour got cancelled — a development that rattled me initially. My wife and I, spent the whole day wandering aimlessly in the city. And believe me when I say that this turned out to be the most memorable day of our European holiday.

We wandered about in the narrow streets of the old quarter. Stopped to look at glass curios displayed in countless shops. Went into a few corner pubs, each serving its own specialty. Lager there is brewed to perfection and is unbelievably cheap — around 5 cents for a glass of draught beer. We wandered into historic squares. And rested in shade in quiet little parks.

Towards the evening when we had grown ravenously hungry and were looking for a suitable restaurant, I fell into conversation with a local gentleman. Asked where we could have a typical Czech meal, he seemed pleased to be of help — locals always know of good eating places. He escorted us through various alleys to his favourite restaurant; a cozy establishment crowded with Czech families. He not only introduced us to the steward but also recommended certain dishes. I had dumplings and pork chops while my wife had dumplings and grilled trout; accompanied by a large helping of salad and excellent beer, followed by apple pie. The dishes were fresh, tasty and substantial, and the atmosphere congenial. And it all cost the equivalent of Rs 150 each.

Benares is one city where wandering about can be quite rewarding for a gourmet. There’s a Kachauri Galli which specialises in kachauris stuffed with urad ki dal, and served with tamarind chutney. In another street, jalebis are thin, crunchy and dripping with syrup. But the high point of our wandering was eating rabri from a streetside vendor. I have yet to taste more delicious stuff: Fragrant, rich, lightly sugared. And served by a surprisingly relaxed, jolly vendor. On questioning we learnt, he rested till mid-day while his wife prepared some 10 kg of rabri with the utmost care. He then brought it to his appointed corner. The whole thing got sold within four hours. Back home he would have his dinner and thereafter a longish card session with his cronies. Not a bad life at all.

Wandering does have an indulgent scent, and so provokes some guilt in many people. But nothing like letting the ambience, the mood of a place dictate your wanderings. When you give yourself up to that ambience, rich and strange things happen. You feel you’re looking at a place, not from outside but from inside.