The Alps above southern Germany/northern Austria
Travel long and far enough and over time you’ll have looked out several airplane windows. Through the oval frame you will have seen the glaciers of Alaska and the rice fields of Bali, the Pyramids of Giza and the temples of Bangkok. You’ll have gazed upon the White House in winter, the Eiffel Tower the day Princess Diana died, Jerusalem’s glistening Dome of the Rock at the hour of sunrise. You’ll have seen the close proximity of Jewish settlements and Palestinian refugee camps, waves crashing over freighters in the Sea of Japan, a volcano called Anak Krakatoa.
While looking at all this, you’ll also sometimes catch your own reflection in the window. Perhaps the sight will jolt you slightly, because that face, reflected from a window moving at 500+ miles per hour rather than from your more stable bathroom mirror, can suddenly seem strange, foreign. Aloft, moving at speed, and in the act of leaving something behind and going to something new, you see yourself again for the first time. The airplane mirror is a reminder that you are connected to all that is scattered across the Earth, and this requires some digestion. You simply cannot see yourself the same when you find you are in relation to rice fields and volcanoes, refugee camps and architecture, several billion men and women living out your window.
Currently I am in Warsaw, Poland, at the start of a seven-week trip that I hope will take me overland from here to Armenia. Along the way I’ll see a few friends, hopefully make some new ones, and of course take pictures. I’ll learn a little more about history (e.g., the Warsaw Uprising), visit the graves of people I admire (e.g. Władysław Szpilman), finally visit the small but strategically sensitive country of Moldova, and also visit the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
There are many reasons to travel, to take a seat beside an airplane window and go. It is a point Colin Thubron eloquently makes in the opening pages of his book Shadow of the Silk Road:
Sometimes a journey arises out of hope and instinct, the heady conviction, as your finger travels along the map: Yes, here and here…and here. These are the nerve-ends of the world…
A hundred reasons clamour for your going. You go to touch on human identities, to people an empty map. You have a notion that this is the world’s heart. You go to encounter the protean shapes of faith. You go because you are still young and crave excitement, the crunch of your boots in the dust; you go because you are old and need to understand something before it’s too late. You go to see what will happen.
Warsaw, Poland
