Part 2: The Where

Socrates once said “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Correspondingly, the journey unexamined is not worth going on.

And so, our long detour to understand the whys of travel was thereby not a detour at all. Anyhow, at long last we return to the original question: if I could travel anywhere, where would I go?

In keeping with my previous arguments for the purpose of travel as cultural longing, I will attempt to make my justification for why I would travel to a place as pure as possible, relying not on what I can do there, but what these places symbolise in the cultures that surround me.

As a consumer of travel-glorifying media, the aforementioned adventure novels and beautifully curated social media accounts, I have been, like most others, enraptured by the kinds of places that normally star in these narratives, but more importantly, influenced by the lenses we look at these places through.

Of course the many photos of the island paradises floating in picture perfect azure waters or the cobbled streets of France haven’t failed to catch my eye.

But what has influenced me the most were novels where the places where the setting was almost another character, given a life, a personality. The wild, headstrong moors of Wuthering Heights;the glamorous, disaffected Jazz Age New York of the Great Gatsby; even the vindictive instigator of a house in A Streetcar Named Desire.

And so, the lens through which I look at a place is as a person foremost.

The question of where I would like to visit is thus reframed:

Who would I like to meet? Perhaps a vivacious extrovert, up for absolutely anything? Or an introvert with a rich inner life?

I feel like being carried away by the vibrant energy of a big, densely populated city, overflowing with warmth and sun in the early summer. Big cities are perpetually perplexing, brimming with tiny delights and small absurdities. Big cities are at once always familiar and endlessly surprising. They can offer the most profound solace and togetherness and then the most profound sense of individuality. They are forged in the crucible of contradictions, eternally dynamic, endlessly changing.

And as someone from the tropics, though I’ve been exposed to rather an overabundance of sun, and have in fact complained at length about it, I’ve enjoy the summer sun at a core, foundational level.

I’d like to visit a place with the openness of good public transport systems, of ease of mobility.

I seek the leisurely grace of a city with open spaces and wide pavements where one can take long walks without a constant throb of anxiety at being run over.

The proof of a pudding is in the eating, and the proof of a city is in the walking. I love to explore places on foot, feeling the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. It is, to me, a rare and precious experience to be able to walk around at one’s own pace, finding niches on would not see while speeding by on a car.

I seek the spry dexterity of a city with the confluence of modernity and ancientness that never fails to amaze me. A Macy’s in downtown Chicago with a stunning stained glass Tiffany ceiling. A Kathmandu temple surrounded with souvenir T shirts stalls. An old Madras house turned into a boutique.

I seek a the generosity and warmth of a place with rich local food and art and music.

It’s always fascinating to see what wonders can be concocted from different permutations of the same seven notes of music on different instruments, what wonders can be sculpted from those basic components of food, salt, heat, fat and acid.

Though many places may fill these requirements, and these requirements will evolve with the ebb and flow of life and time, the place I’ve found to fit these criteria best is Seville, in Spain, the source of my name and its many mispronunciations.

One day, I dream to stand under the stained glass of the Seville Cathedral, to walk through the halls of the Alcazar palace.

But the places I’d like to visit will change and evolve. But what will stay is the desire to to travel to a different place, to explore the nuances, the subtleties the details, and ultimately to make an acquaintance of somewhere-of someone new.