Pack your bags
Leave your reservations behind
Bring with you only the essentials
An open mind
A caring heart
Bring the stories of your whenua
Remember the way the winds feels
Sand between your feet
The music of the forest
The babbling of the creeks
Carry your history
The mountains you’ve climbed to get here
Remember the hands which pulled you up
The voices which told you to never give up
Remember to leave space in your luggage
For all the lessons you will learn
Fold up the stories into neat little packages
Collect conversations like souvenirs to hand out when you get back
Load your wallet with time
And patience
And empathy
Spend it like currency
Give it away like charity
Trade it
Lend it
Donate it
Invest it
Cherish it
Come with your true self
Your best self
And you will come back
Changed
New self
Who are you self
Global citizen
Worldwide participant
Member of the ecosystem
Reinvent the concept of self
Understanding what it means To be Indian.
Setting my intentions for this trip to India has been a really important part of my travel process. Firstly, acknowledging how lucky I am to have this opportunity and how to make the most of this experience.
Poetry is something that I tend to come back to as a reflective tool. I love using it as a way to process my experiences, and investigate ideas from many different perspectives.
In visiting a foreign country, one of the first places to start preparing is considering the material items to bring with you on the trip. For example, what outfits to wear, how much money and currency you want to bring. On the trip, there is also a real focus on what to bring back, what you’d like to get a photo of, and the souvenirs to pick up. In this way, we might be inclined to thinking less about the non-material items we bring on a trip – the kinds of experiences we would like to have, the attitudes we bring, and the personal journey and outcomes of the trip as a whole. For me, this feels like the difference between engaging as a tourist vs. having a cultural experience, and getting to share a meaningful experience.
As we navigate an increasingly global world, being able to bridge cultures is essential. For me, as I’m passionate about multi-disciplinary research, doing this involves working between different disciplines in the context of different cultural backgrounds and experience levels. Hence, having the skills to navigate across these kinds of relationships with cultural competency is something I’m hoping to foster on this trip.
And so my journey to India begins!