Rosita Boland has gone backpacking in Asia. In the first of a regular series chronicling her journey, she explains from Japan why she decided to go
This time, the desire to go travelling again was triggered by the beautiful little hand-made Japanese book about fans which I bought in the shop of the British Museum in March. When opened flat, the book formed a perfect fan-shaped half-circle, like an archway to somewhere unknown. I brought it home and started dreaming of elsewhere again; of stepping through some looking-glass into other worlds, far away.
It's surprisingly difficult to explain the allure of travel, perhaps because everyone would define it differently. For me, it's nothing to do with escaping some daily grind - I both like and enjoy my life in Ireland. Nor have I any illusions about being an adventurer: most of my previous backpacking has been through well-trod places - Australia; overland from Nepal to Turkey, through India, Pakistan and Iran; Eastern Europe. Neither have I any time for the inverted snobbery of traveller versus tourist - to my mind, you're a tourist in every country except your own.
I'm not even that good at the logistics of travel, being less than enthuasthic about flying, terrible at map-reading and lacking a sense of direction. My first experience of every new place is of instantly getting lost. On the plus side, I never get sick, and on balance, I'm glad I simply got lost in every Indian city I visited than be ill in any of them.
Yet, every few years, I put on the same old (and frankly, now filthy) rucksack and head off for several months. Why? Simply because I love it: love the assault on the senses that new places provoke; love the strange and marvellous people you meet along the way; love the sense of possibilities contained within those fluid months, when whims can, and sometimes do, decide all.
Also, because travelling for months, contrary to what some people may think, is not that expensive. My six-flight, 29,000-miles airpass with BA, Quantas and Cathay Pacific cost less than my return flight to Sydney 14 years ago. And South East Asia, where I plan on being for five months (unless a whim takes me elsewhere en route) is cheap.
However, there was certainly something different about going away this time. Not long before I left, the Bali bomb went off; a terrible act in a powerfully symbolic tourist location. One of my flights was to Bali, where I'd planned on spending a few weeks.
Previously, my only real fears when travelling had been the overloaded buses with poor brakes on ravine roads in northern Pakistan and the street dog in Kathmandu that bolted howling out of dark night and bit me hard, when I was walking alone back to my hotel.
These were the only two times I was ever truly frightened when back-packing, but both these fears were about something real, not something abstract. The Bali bomb has cast a pall of abstract fear, that could, in theory, make one frightened, not just of every popular holiday destination, but of the act of travel itself.
I cancelled the Bali leg of my journey, even though lots of people told me I shouldn't; that "lightning doesn't strike twice".
It wasn't because of fear I cancelled; I simply knew I didn't have the stomach to enjoy myself in a place that only weeks before had been so devastated and contained such recent dreadful memories. But yes, there was a moment, when I first heard the news, and felt a frisson both of fear and vulnerability at the prospect of travelling again, and which I had never felt before.
The other difference about going away this time is e-mail. On every other journey, communication was usually an oxymoron. It once took three hours to get a phoneline to call home at Christmas.
This time out, I haven't written a single letter yet and probably won't, although I've sent several e-mails, each time feeling irrationally as if I am somehow cheating, although who or what, I do not know.
I'm writing this in an Internet cafe in Shinjuku, in Tokyo, not long off the plane from China, where I spent three week on a tour with 11 other backpackers. Three weeks by the calendar yet perhaps closer to three months in experiences. Time is elastic when you are on the road: when you step out of your usual life and through the looking glass of elsewhere and explore new dimensions, which intrigue and frustrate and enthrall, in equal and glorious measure.
Next dispatch: China
