Outside_In

"The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset
with which we travel than on the destination we travel to"
-Alain De Bouton

I'm preparing for a journey to India. I'm going to do a yoga teachers training course in Rishikesh, a small town in the North where the streets are paved with Holy-men and pseudo swami's (those who do it for fun and profit and who have been known to wear Nike trainers beneath their pious robes).

The 'Caucasian-Western-(bottle)- blond- female- tourist- on- a- quest-to- become- one- with- her- inner- dolphin', is a stereotype that chafes my soul like a pair of cheap sneakers.

I've been thinking of my body as my mobile home--the portable , vessel that contains and occupies space. My interior is furnished with multiple layers of thoughts, experiences and perceptions that make me what I am.This is me deliberately extracting my body from its familiar ,everyday context ,an action which I have romanticised into a pilgrimage . Journeys like this sound exotic and mystical, and they probably are to some extent ,but they are also gritty and grimy and punctuated with 'beam-me-up-scotty' moments, when I wish I was back on the couch at home watching life through the filter of the Travel Channel.

Preparing for this journey involves more than dusting off my backpack and pumping my veins full of vaccinations; it involves mentally and spiritually opening up to the beauty and the ugliness of India, of the unknown ...and of myself.

Most travellers feel compelled to document their journeys. I aim to formalise my documentation process into a project , a daily ritual whereby certain aspects of the journey are systematically recorded and catalogued to create an archive of index cards with text and drawings. I have designed a series of cards , one per day , for the purposes of illustration and documentation. The idea is to use each card to represent a 24-hour period so that when they are lined up at the end of the journey they will form a timeline of memory and association--creating a visual archive that bears testimony to one person's experience in a specific time and space.
The cards are printed on 200gm white cardboard . Their dimensions have been calculated to measure 6 by 4 inches (6 multiplied by 4 = 24 (the number of hours in a day)
The front is a blank space for illustration . All drawings will be based on a significant place or experience that defined the day.
The back is designed in the style of an official form where the following data will be logged:

• Day no.(of journey)
  

• Date

• Keyword(the day described in one word)
  

• Location (country, city, place)
  

• No. of steps walked per day (counted using a pedometer),

• Dreams recalled (first thing on waking)
  

• General comments/insights/experiences

I will also be mapping my journey on the Travellerspoint blogsite.