At 54, appreciating a gentler way to travel

My travel companions – three fellow yoga teachers, albeit all younger than me in their 40s – were incredulous. We had just finished a heavy dim-sum lunch in Singapore’s Chinatown and while they plotted a plan of attack on Orchard Road, I said I would go back to the hotel, in the middle of a sunny day, to take a nap. “But we’re leaving tomorrow!” one said. “I thought you wanted those new sandals?” another argued. Both true. But then, I was also sleepy. And somehow, a nap made more sense than dragging myself through malls when I knew a sale was no longer enough to keep me awake.

If there’s anything I have learned from years of traveling for different reasons – from action-packed dive trips and whirlwind “12-cities-in-10-days!” tours to food coverage and cultural explorations in my day job as a writer – it’s that, really, you can only do so much before your body asks for a break, and your mind groans from fast-tracked sensory overload.

Maybe it’s age. At 54, my days of getting by on sheer adrenaline are over, and this evolution (devolution?) has given me a new perspective. I’ve learned that there’s nothing like taking in a painting, a landscape or a school of barracuda when you’re rested and refreshed, not frazzled from the red-eye flight you took before hitting the ground running, determined not to waste a minute. Wasting time, I’ve realized, is a relative concept.

There’s a gentler appreciation when you can stay in one place for a week, soak in the atmosphere at different times of the day and sit still when you want to

With experience and less sturdy knees come discrimination and prudence. There’s the conscious choice of quality over quantity. There’s a gentler appreciation when you can stay in one place for a week, soak in the atmosphere at different times of the day and sit still where and when you want to. The French even have a noun for it: a flâneur, a “stroller”, a “lounger” or – my preferred definition – a “loafer”.

I’ve evolved into a globestroller, not a globetrotter. I don’t chase trains or run through airports as much as I used to. Outside San Francisco, I drove to the Muir Woods once, chose a tree after a half-hour’s hike and sat under it until the park was closing. At Sydney Harbour, I took a can of soda and a sandwich, found a spot on the grass with a view of the Opera House and the sea and lay down looking at the sky for so long that I got sunburned.

When I first visited Batanes in the Philippine north over 20 years ago, daily four-hour, strenuous hikes that started at dawn – on paths that wound through hills and beaches – were the norm. I actually sighed in satisfaction when I returned recently: I took a short walk, parked myself at a café and enjoyed my brew and fried sweet potato chips while gazing out at the same winding roads, now paved, but with the same incredible beauty in the background.

I told myself I’d give away my suitcases when it became too challenging to get around. Then again, if my brain stays young, in a decade or so I might just be an old lady with a cane, strolling through a park in some new city, happily leaving the timetables and selfies to the kids.