Our first travel as a child is within the house from one room to another when we crawl into an adjacent room, everyone around us excited to witness it. The next travel that gets us excited is when through a chain of falling, getting up, falling, and then again getting up we cross the front door of the house.
It makes everyone happy for a moment but then they put wooden barricades to ensure we don’t cross it again and get hurt ourselves. The barricade is a sign of restrictions that are put to their movements throughout their life.
In the first few years of our lives, we experience safe and comfortable travel as we go wherever parents travel especially with the mother to our native place, to religious places, market, marriages, etc. We have no choice then. Till here there is no different experience based on your gender.
As we move on to school, the difference, and the ease of movement that boys have compared to the barricades that the girls have become noticeable.
The urge to have similar access and ease of movement with respect not just to places the boys visit but also the time and the days they can visit grows within girls.
Whenever a girl with all innocence expresses the desire to go out in the evening or to nearby places she is always told that it’s not safe to do so and hence they must stay at home. A few privileged ones who do get to go to annual family trips come back and share their beautiful experiences. These experiences animate the burning desires and strengthen the urge within the girls to travel even more.
The school field trips/picnics satisfy that urge but momentarily. The girls in these school outings enjoy a rare sense of security with which they visit the place and come back happily.
As we step into teenage the restrictions are more prominent with regards to our actions. While it might be keeping our best interests and personal safety in mind the glaring disparity between the ease of movement between the boys and the girls become more proclaimed.
As we move into the corridors of the college with relatively greater freedom than in the schools ever had, it’s tempting to break free now and then. When we finally manage to venture out of the college to a nearby place making sure we return in time to home, the excitement of travel is marred by the fear of being caught and resulting in anxiety.
Relationships that some of us get into initially look like giving us the freedom to travel only to realize later that it’s one more additional source of restriction of “travel only with me and to places that I go”.
Even in college saving grace is the study trips. But this time it’s not just going out to a new place that excites us but the gay abandon with which we enjoy with our friends that makes us look forward to these trips.
Thus through the “hide and seek” kind of travels, we finish our education and move to bigger cities with wide-eyed dreams and aspirations among other things of traveling to new places and adventures.
In the early days in our job the travel is more to the happening places within the city and enjoying the newfound freedom to the fullest. As we start getting bored by visiting the same old places in the city we then want to explore the nearby places during the weekends.
The weekend travels are more often than not are group travels either with our college friends or office mates or with the pg inmates. These travels give us a sense of breaking the shackles and enjoy the camaraderie.
Surprisingly after a point of time, the weekend travels do not get us excited like before. All women solo trips offer a unique opportunity at this juncture. These trips get a diverse crowd of youngsters, old age people yes them too, young girls accompanying their mothers, working professionals, housewives, etc
The experience of interacting with such a diverse crowd & not needing to worry about what to wear and what to do as the entire group is of women is such a soul-satisfying experience. You also feel you are
Author – Priyanka Jadav
