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FEBRUARY 2018
For the Love of Travel
SIMON CLAYS
Travel and romance are much maligned
friends. Star crossed lovers. A million times
I’ve heard that the journey is part of the
destination, but it just doesn’t map out in the
travel versus romance stakes—anyone who
has the audacity to call Security at Delhi IGI
romantic, has surely never found love. That’s
not to say that travel and romance doesn’t
exist. You just can’t plan it. Can’t create
romance. If you do, you’re doomed to failure
and held hostage by sychronisation. Far better,
to let it wash over you and let it happen when
it happens. I’ve been lucky enough to travel
extensively with my wife and shared many
great ‘moments’, but that’s not the point because
my most romantic was also the simplest: the
privacy of a sunrise swim while on Koh Samui,
Thailand. Beautiful silence. Beautiful warm
orange skies. Beautiful moment, blown in on
an unplanned breeze of spontaneity. I couldn’t
have ‘not’ planned it better.A simple swim off a Koh Samui beach, proved my most romantic moment. I’ll keep going back to Europe till I scandalously lose every bit of myself.
FROM LEFT: FOTOTRAV/GETTYIMAGES; KAVALENKAVA VOLHA/ALAMYANWESHA SANYAL
My best travel memories are of Europe. I’ve
danced to Danish beats in a dodgy nightclub;
walked miles alone in the dark, cobbled alleys
of Barcelona at a time when crime was a
national problem; I’ve had my name announced
by the captain of an aircraft welcoming me to
Armenia (it was the ambassador’s invitation);
I’ve followed retracting glaciers in St Moritz
as if my life depended on it. Most importantly,
I’ve met people who’ve taught me the value of
time, the necessity of proper goodbyes, and also
why some goodbyes are necessary. Last year,
I travelled to Amsterdam for the first time and
realised how I—as do many of us—leave a part
of myself behind every time, hoping to return
one day and find it: sometimes in a middle-aged
woman who called you her daughter and gave
you her last bear hug, a tour guide who sat with
you way past his hours to discuss history, or
even a tipsy teenager you met in the restroom
and bonded with over gum stuck in her hair.Flip through our first ever double cover issue for the best of both worlds: Romance and Europe
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