An Ode to Travel Friendships
You’re walking around in a new city alone. It’s comfortable, because that anxiety from the spotlight effect is long gone since no one you know is here anyway. You’re admiring a street musician covering an old Coldplay song while playing the acoustic guitar and the trumpet interchangeably.
“Sounds amazing, doesn’t he?” remarked someone beside you.
Then you go through the typical list of questions or things people say when you’re travelling; like “where are you from?”, “what brought you here?”, you talk about what’s around you, joke about the locals. You start walking around town with this person and before you know it, you know about each other’s families and friends, habits, insecurities, fears, philosophies, hopes, and dreams. You talk about how you feel that with each new city you have left a tiny piece of your heart and you laugh it off because it sounds silly, but that person firmly grabs your hand and says,
“You’ve taken the words
from my mouth.”
You make plans to meet up tomorrow morning to explore a weird part of the city. As you type in your number to this new friend’s phone, you laugh. You realise that after all that, you don’t even know each other’s names.
At least now you do.
So you spend time with this person.
You take four-hour hikes together and finish each other’s sentences.
You attempt to become the ultimate wingman for
your new friend who’s hitting on a local.
You get your tarot card read by the beach over cheap wine.
You take road trips and sing and dance along to
Earth, Wind & Fire’s September with the windows rolled down.
Both of you get frustrated because of how much you feel like you click with each other. This person gets you, and you’ve opened up so much to this person more than to your friends whom you know for years. Your theory is that travel friendships cant afford long small talk, so that small talk that usually takes weeks in normal life is compressed to minutes, and you begin the real talk much sooner. You both start thinking of your friends back home and attempt to friend-matchmake so that your friend becomes more a part of your life.
But before you know it, you have to say good bye. It was a special bubble and you feel like you have known each other for years though you’ve only hung out with each other for days, if not hours. You trade Facebooks and promise each other to stay in touch and someday visit each other’s hometown.
“If you’re ever in my city, you know you have a place to stay and the best local tour guide around.”
It’s sad, heartbreaking sometimes. To let go of someone you’ve connected so well with. You wish you could create this magical island where all your travel friends and friends back home could be in one place and everyday is an exciting new adventure. Too bad this dream is too utopian. So you would stay in touch and FaceTime each other when you have the confusing time difference thing down, or maybe in a few years you meet again.
And even if you don’t, even if you slowly drift apart and eventually that friend becomes one of the random friends on your Facebook feed (“Who’s this person again?”), it’s nice to know that in some other part of the world, you have someone that feels like your second soul and who shared the grandest of adventures with.
Just reminds you how despite how big the world is, reminded by the world map with pins of places to go on top of your bed, the world is pretty small, afterall.
Words and photographs by Nadia Pritta Wibisono