Travelling alone allows you to witness and record experiences and coincidences which are usually hidden by the white noise of our regular lives at home
It’s a beautiful summer evening in Maine—the pine trees that I’ve wanted to see since the seventh grade encrust the hills and mountains around our campsite. A solitary songbird warbles his lonely tune across the lake. Apart from the three or four tents pitched by our neighbours, there’s no hint of civilisation at the Thomas Point Campground. Until, that is, the air is rent by the cursing of my Slovenian driving buddy, Blaž, who has managed to lock our keys inside the trunk of our car. Not the most auspicious start to our 10-day road trip.
When I was in India packing for this trip, I didn’t imagine any of the things that would be attendant to it. I had a romanticised view of the backpacking life. I’m not ashamed to say it—I needed that view. After all, I had quit my job with a major movie studio and sold my house. A move that even today elicits gasps of disbelief tinged with envy: “You sold your house? In Mumbai?” I bought a ticket for the US, with the intention of backpacking across the North and South Americas for a year. My first stop was New York, and thence to cold and rainy New England, the land of Stephen King, clam chowder and pine forests.
And that’s when it happened—the first moment of what I like to call serendipitous travel coincidence. The entrance of the tent next to ours opened and we met Gayle and Steve, a couple who had heard Blaž’s yell of dismay and ventured out to comfort us. Over the next few hours, they shared with us a few lobster rolls, some beer, words of advice on how to get into bluegrass music (their son Josh plays in a band) and where to find the best blueberries in the neighbourhood. Crucially, they also shared with us their American Automobile Association number, which provides free roadside assistance, including lockouts. Our misadventure and subsequent rescue by Gayle and Steve that summer evening in New England is just one of a long string of similar stories.
Once it begins, the web of coincidences just keeps adding to itself. I was in Utah, in the southwest of the US. And despite the epic landscape of red desert, prehistoric boulders, and the cornflower blue sky through which leviathan clouds rolled majestically, I was miserable. I’d injured my knee hiking: A strained cartilage, caused by an ill-timed jump off a ledge onto uncertain footing, had me doubting my ability to ever hike again. But then I met Sam who, when he’s not going on road trips or hiking in the US, works for a joint replacement company in Switzerland. “You need millet,” he said, in his impeccable European-accented English. “Some doctors claim that it’s a super-food for cartilage. Just try millet in your diet and you should be ok.” Now, I don’t know if it’s the millet or if my knee just decided to spontaneously heal, but I have since been on more than 30 gruelling hikes. A few twinges from the offending knee do make themselves known, but I haven’t faced the sort of debilitating pain I used to feel.
(This story appears in the July-Aug 2014 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)