Its been a while since I traveled with a group of friends and it was a welcome change to my solitary travels. I used to travel a lot with friends during my CEPT days and did a bit during my Berkeley days as well but having traveled alone quite a few times over the past 13-14 years, I have often thought of the difference. I was - and still am - convinced that traveling with others usually makes me less able to "feel" my new surroundings... or maybe it is the nature of this "feeling" that changes profoundly when one is journeying alone in an unknown place amongst unknown people... it is only when I have traveled alone that places or moments or interactions with people have truly moved me (though a couple of moments in Syria proved to be the exception to this) or have remained stamped in my otherwise rotten memory. This is not to say that I find traveling alone "fun" and it invariably has its lonely moments too, but it is often also beautiful in a way that I have rarely found while traveling with others and which I wouldn't care to describe in words. But this trip wasn't meant to be one of those travel experiences. This was meant to be fun, in the company of friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in more than two years.
the girls at the beirut airport waiting for our flight to amman(and it seems we were having such a good time waiting that we forgot to check our boarding time and then had to make a dash for it; they even had to announce our names)
"I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."
- Mark Twain
Like or hate - seems a bit extreme - perhaps Mark Twain was being witty or maybe he meant traveling with someone for a month! Still, the four of us had 3 days together which involved traveling by air and road, crossing international borders and one of us (me) getting held up for hours at the border, journeying everyday to a different place, searching for hotels last-minute and spending each night at a different place, most of us not knowing the language, sitting on donkeys, one of the donkeys stumbling and falling on one of us leading to a muscular sprain, etc. After that three of us had another 2-3 days together. So I am happy to report that we all pretty much still like each other ;-) In fact, before beginning the trip I had wondered how it would go, because each of us has probably somewhat different ideas about travel and because I've become so used to doing it all my way that now I find myself almost reluctant to travel with others (and I had another 7 days in Syria with V, another friend, so it was going to be a long trip in the company of friends). But the trip turned out to be quite lovely, despite a few mishaps and trying to squeeze in too much of Jordan into 3 days. I only wish I'd had more time to take off my shoes, sit back and enjoy the company of the girls.
still at the beirut airport: H doing accounts, C checking the net for hotels in jordan?Jordan trip photographs coming soon - once I figure out how to retrieve them from my digital memory card coz I deleted them by mistake before downloading all of them to my laptop!
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