I have always travelled; it is the strongest memory I have from childhood. I travelled a great deal with my grandparents during my primary-school years: in June, once school was out, they would take me with them to Calabria and bring me back to Rome in September, just in time for the new school year.
I also travelled quite a bit with my parents, up to the age of about 15 or 16 — skiing holidays, weekends away, my first big trip to the United States for a month, and summer holidays down by the sea in Calabria.
But above all I travelled an enormous amount on my own. And I started doing so very early. I have always been a girl with a strong desire for independence, which my mother knows well; she will probably never forget the days and nights I put her through with worry, because at 17 I was already leaving home — once to Turin, once to Pescara, once to the Netherlands to attend a large international hackers’ gathering. And I always travelled very light: in my backpack I kept only the essentials, a book, a notebook, and my inseparable CD player (a tremendous must-have at the time). I did not even know what a suitcase or a trolley bag was. I kept on like that for years — on Saturdays, the moment school ended at one o’clock, I would run to the station to catch the train and reach all those people the internet had given me and whom I absolutely wanted to meet.
Then came the day of a birthday I no longer remember precisely. I was already working, already living alone. I was perhaps 23, and my parents gave me my first suitcase: a glorious yellow Samsonite that still holds up magnificently, doing its splendid job after journeying from Cuba to India, to Japan, to the United States, and across nearly all of Italy and Europe. It seemed enormous and beautiful to me, and I could not wait to try it! And so I abandoned my 40-litre pack and for many years, until a few weeks ago, I travelled only with it. I could bring and bring back all manner of things, and over time — partly because I was young, on my own, and financially independent — I fell into the bad habit of carrying too many useless things. Clothes never worn, bottles of creams and soaps utterly superfluous, things I had no need of.
But no matter how much, in certain periods of life, whether brief or long, one might modify one’s habits or take small “detours” — one’s true nature, fortunately, can never be entirely changed.
And so, after giving it some thought — not even very much, to tell the truth — on my way back from Finland I decided that for this second trip to India I would return to basics, to my own origins: going with a backpack on my shoulders :)
I bought a new pack, a beautiful 50+10-litre bag that will accompany me, in ten days’ time, for a whole month in India. I will travel light as I once did; because for me, travelling with a backpack means travelling light in every sense. It is not just a matter of the weight you carry on your shoulders — you are free, you can move more nimbly with your home-of-the-moment right there on your back. It is a concept that is a little difficult to explain in words.
And besides, let us be honest: India is a country to be visited this way. If you truly intend to get around, to experience India with all its colours, smells, absurd situations you could never have imagined, the impossible hotels, the tuk-tuks that race through the streets — a backpack is without doubt the most practical luggage you can carry.
Unless, of course, you fancy one of those all-inclusive resort-by-the-sea trips — but then we are not talking about the same thing, and do not take it personally, we simply have two very different ideas of what the word “travel” means :)
There is barely more than a week to go and I cannot wait to finish packing my bag and board the flight bound for Mumbai! I will try to recount here on the blog — and not only here — what India has in store for me this year. But I know her a little by now, and I know she could make me talk at length, or keep me in silence for days on end.