Don Juan of Travel

What traveling feels like.

No single place do I belong to—nor, in truth, would I ever wish to.

At times, I am cradled by the shore, lulled by the eternal ballad between the sun and the sea. The waters unfurl like a jeweled tapestry, languid and unending, reducing all else to specks of some fragile, far-off dream. Here, the world seems awash in a brilliance more dazzling than reality should allow. Even the brief arc of a bird in flight gleams with liberty, as though the sky itself whispered secrets into its wings. Rainbows bow nearer, not as myths but as companions, draped across the heavens like silken sashes. And in that place, the unruly wilderness of my mind—its pell-mell avalanches of thought, its tumbling cataracts of desire—grows suddenly serene, dissolving into the horizon’s promise of ellipses, unfinished yet infinite.

Elsewhere, I find myself dwarfed by mountains, titanic and solemn, youthful yet ancient, bearing in their jagged ribs the accumulated wisdom of centuries. They stand as citadels of secrets never spoken, embodiments of all that refuses to yield. They bow only after thunderous contests of storm and stone, never before. Around them, clouds gather in their mercurial moods—sometimes parched and skeletal as desert bones, sometimes heavy and tearful as a famished child. And wandering some forgotten path, I may stumble upon the skeletal frame of a bridge long undone, its collapse scattering into the ether the thousand tales of passage it once bore.

In other corners of the earth, I am swallowed by cities—cauldrons bubbling with roars, bright lights, masks and mirrors, facades glittering beneath the feverish pulse of neon nights. Humanity surges here like molten putties, molded by unseen hands, pushed and pulled in an endless choreography of power. The streets are alive with perpetual urgency: each soul breathless in its climb, desperate to merge and yet frantic to remain distinct—all within the same heartbeat. Two chip hucksters hawk their trinkets with slyness, and every passerby carries himself as though clasping fate in his pocket.

It is this—the hidden shades, the twilight stories, the chiaroscuro of each place—that sets my soul aflame and whispers to the hunger that compels me to wander still. For no two places exhale the same perfume. Each breathes its own temperament, each dons its own mask, its own flesh. Some sigh, gentle as violins carried by the wind. Others blare like brass trumpets, exultant and unrestrained. Some conceal themselves behind veils of mystery, while others bare their scars proudly beneath the sun.

Few mortals know the delirium of love even once, yet I am graced to fall into rapture each time my feet touch new soil. What others dismiss as strangeness or ugliness of the new, I inhale as intoxication—the potent draught that lifts me to the loftiest of highs. Each place, each encounter, each unfolding vista becomes another embrace, another lover, another seduction. I am as Don Juan himself, drifting forever between raptures, lips forever pressed to the new.

And always, I marvel at this: no matter how many seasons one spends in a place, it withholds a secret still. A lane shaded in quiet secrecy, a sun-drenched street humming with laughter, a café scented with roasted warmth, a bakery where hidden joys breathe out in the fragrance of bread. Always, the locals greet me not as an intruder but as a beloved baharwala, a foreigner invited to sip, to savor, to step lightly—or to plunge headlong—into the river of their world. Each such encounter delivers me from the monochromatic certainty, granting me again the shimmer of possibility.

Shall I, one day, trade these jeweled love affairs—the opulent treasures each place guards in its bosom—for the fragile tether of a singular love? Time alone shall reveal that answer. For now, I remain a bohemian blessed, my heart stitched with wanderlust, my soul adorned with its chosen creed: one Moon, one Sky, one Sun—and one vast, breathing organism of a world.

Never, never shall I barter such richness for the basement-bargain version of life.