I was going to miss my flight. Circumstances that January in a crowded Goa in Western India had led me to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. My flight to Mumbai would depart without me and with it the promise of a two day lay over connection to New Zealand.
So I got to problem solving mode and found the awful truth, Goa was packed from the Christmas and New Year celebrations and the day I wanted to travel was the day the state saw tourists depart en-masse for other places. And as the state emptied, the other modes of transport were booked solid. Flights - not a chance, trains, sold out, not even standing room only. Busses same overcrowded oversold story.
By chance as I worried about my onward flights to New Zealand, I spoke with one of my friends in the village I was staying in, "but this is not a problem" he told me smiling, my brother has a car - you can drive!
I was skeptical - as the drive is all of 600km. But keen to make my connection - and with the 2 day layover I had planned giving me a cushion, I agreed to meet his brother.
And so we set off on an 18 hour journey. We left late at night to avoid heavy traffic and took the smaller NH66 to avoid the more dangerous and congested NH48.
Just past midnight our driver was pulled over by customs officials making sure we were not bootleggers (Goa's alcohol laws are very different to Maharashtra's) and at about 3am we pulled over and slept until the predawn light woke us and our journey continued.
And that is where I realized how grateful was for the transport snafu. You see we were driving through the Western Ghats, a mountain chain that runs up the coast of India, connecting Tamil Nadu in the south to Gujarat in the north through Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra (sorry I'm a geography nerd).
Passing through small villages as the sun rose, bullock carts trundling along the small roads, wood smoke rising from kitchens preparing breakfast and the change of the light on the rice paddy fields, palms and tree clad slopes caught my breath and on that trip, I came to see that it's not just where you are going, it's how you get there, and often getting there by a route other than you expected can give you insight or experience hitherto unforeseen
I've heard it quoted that "the journey is the reward" and that trip was the first time I realized it for my self.
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