The New Zealand Herald is bringing back some of the best premium stories of 2020. Today we look at travel - the domestic trips we've taken and books we've read in order to get out travel fix from home.
Scotty Stevenson: New Zealand, the place we call home
It was May 4, which feels like a year ago or yesterday depending on your perspective. In the current phrasing we, as a country, were a week into level 3 of the Government's Covid-19 response. There was some hope that soon we would be able to get back on track, or at least get our children out of the house. But there was also a distinct funk. You could feel it, although it would be foolhardy to attempt to articulate it for all. For me, it was this: I felt disconnected, cut off, marooned. I was sure that, like me, others pined for a little piece of New Zealand - a drive, a dive, a hike, a bike, a walk, a swim, a trek, a trip, a run in the hills - and I wondered where that might be and why.
And so, I sent a tweet: "What is the first NZ destination you will go to when you can? Post a pic and a reason."
I didn't expect too much by way of response but then something lovely happened, something really lovely that confirmed what I already knew about the vast majority of us who call Aotearoa home: we feel deeply, utterly helplessly, head-over-heels connected to it.
Steve Braunias: Around the world with Paul Theroux
It's very strange now to look at my row of travel books by the best travel writer there ever was. His tales of moving from one country to the next, a traveller at large in the wide world, seem more like his other kinds of books: novels. Right now we can only imagine what it's like to travel. To write about it would be to write fiction. Paul Theroux – 27 novels, 18 travel books - was a master of both.
He went everywhere. His first, classic book, The Great Railway Bazaar, saw him leave London at Victoria station and return four and a half months later via the Trans-Siberian Express. I think his best book was the one where he travelled through Africa (Dark Star Safari) or maybe it was the one where he travelled through China (Riding The Iron Rooster) and even his worst one, where he dragged his sorry arse through New Zealand, Australia and the South Pacific (The Happy Isles of Oceania) was just about the best travel book set in our own happy isles.
The best New Zealand escapes for solo travellers
Learning to be alone can be empowering for some, frightening for others.
Sometimes aloneness is thrust upon us, sometimes we seek it out in a desperate escape from the madness of the world around us. Solitude can be a chance to recuperate and reset.
Learning to do things alone and sit with your own company can be challenging, but also empowering and energising. A solo escape might be anything from dining alone at a restaurant and enjoying being an observer of others, to a full-on retreat in the wilderness with nothing but the breeze through the trees and nocturnal animals to keep you company.
As we endure the current state of uncertainty, there's something whimsical and inviting about planning an escape away from everyone you knows. Unsurprisingly, we're all a bit more fatigued than usual this year with the current state of the world, which means a solo escape could be just the ticket to rejuvenating our mindsets.
Where to find joy when you're travelling solo.
Simon Wilson: Travels with my armchair
Movies can be so misleading. The snow in Dr Zhivago, so Russian although it was shot in Spain; the Vietnamese jungle of Apocalypse Now, shot in the Philippines; the streets of Woody Allen's Manhattan, shot in the right city but in black and white, which makes everything both more real and less real at the same time.
Then there's Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, which was not actually shot in Middle Earth.
Books on the other hand offer you a chance to read about places you never could travel to anyway.
Why I'm glad I didn't throw away my travel souvenirs
In early 2019, a combination of moving house for the first time in 12 years, and the global zeitgeist that was Marie Kondo's Netflix show Tidying Up, saw me standing in my living room clutching a plastic London snowglobe, agonising whether or not to throw it away.
"Does this spark joy?" I asked myself, following Kondo's patented method of working out what was clutter and what was cherished. After much deliberating, I tucked it into a moving box and carried on.
As a frequent traveller, my home was full of travel souvenirs. Nothing too tacky or useless - no gaudy fridge magnets or oversized sombreros - but many much-loved reminders of the trips I want to remember forever.
And now, as I sit in my bubble in my sixth week working from home, mourning the journeys I won't be taking this year, my joy comes from the fact I didn't throw them all away.
