Somewhere over the rainbow

CAPE TIMES, 30 MAY 2003

I HAVE BEEN PLANNING a holiday. Even the most diligent and workaholic columnist needs from time to time to breathe that sweet, sweet air that is not clogged by the miasma of deadlines, and to stretch and yawn and shut his eyes far from the crash and rattle of outraged readers’ letters hitting his doorstep. Why outraged readers can’t just write their letters on regular paper like everyone else, I’ll never know.

So I have of late been perusing travel brochures. Ah, but the world is pretty in travel brochures. Everywhere at the far end of a long-distance flight, it seems, is nothing but one long, empty palm-lined beach, or an endless succession of noble and ancient ruins, proud and deserted, lit by the gentle golden light of sunset. I would like to live in a travel brochure, or at least travel in one. Nowhere in travel brochures are there queues of unhappy people waiting for a delayed flight; nowhere in travel brochures are there vast Americans with shirts like shower curtains and backsides like an Engen garage, shouldering past you to rub their bellies against the Mona Lisa. In travel brochures the only people you ever see are happy locals, ready to offer you a tasty drink in half a hollow pineapple, or cool strangers in evening dresses with a glint in their eye to suggest passionate assignations behind the curtains at the Vienna Opera House.

Sometimes I think the best part of travelling is the part before you leave, when you can imagine a perfectly framed world of edited highlights. Of course, the canny traveller knows that this is just a dream. “Travel” and “travail” (meaning “painful or laborious effort”) were in Middle English precisely the same word, with the same meaning. I’m not sure that things have changed all that much.

Still, it is a beautiful dream. Whose heart is so flinty they didn’t sigh to recently read of one Koichiro Takata, a 22-year-old ophthalmology student from Japan, who was so disappointed by his holiday in Kashmir that he tried to commit suicide? The fact that Mr Takata chose Kashmir for his dream holiday – presumably edging out such rival fun spots as Kabul and Mosul and Khartoum – should probably tell us something about his judgement, but I felt a strong pang of sympathetic recognition when he announced from his Kashmiri hospital bed: “This place does not look like my travel brochures. This is not the Kashmir I read about. I feel hurt.”

It seems that, upon landing in Kashmir, Mr Takata became anxious about the armed soldiers patrolling the streets, feeling they detracted from the natural beauty of the place. Apparently there were no camouflaged gunmen in any of his travel brochures. Unable to stand the disappointment a second longer, Mr Takata produced a pair of scissors and started stabbing himself in the chest. I myself have at times been tempted to produce a pair of scissors and stab my travel agent, not to mention the person sitting next to me on the flight, but I have always stopped short of turning the clippers on myself. I suppose my sense of personal honour is just not as powerful as Mr Takata’s. The Kashmiri Tourism Authority declined to comment, which is probably sensible.

Mr Takata has since made a full recovery, and says he will not be dissuaded from future travelling. Bless you, Mr Takata, for continuing to be a dreamer. The world needs dreamers, but if you ever make it to Cape Town, I sincerely hope there isn’t a cloud covering the mountain on the day you arrive.