This is a guest column written by my daughter. She just wanted to write one blog, but we’ve morphed it into a series that we alternately write. Two people, two perspectives, narrated in acts, like a play’s script, describing an epic journey that we took as a family to the Torres.
By: Ishani Ghosh.
February 21, 2020
“We’re going to Chile this year”, my dad declared. While as a statement this was pretty benign, what followed was a description of what sounded like an Odyssey to discover far flung corners of the world. Alaska, Patagonia, Great Barrier Reef, Kilimanjaro, Maldives, and the Galapagos got thrown into the mix of an idea that sounded like a Tolkein hero’s quest and unlike anything that would constitute our regular vacation plans.
Typically, we’re used to these ideas meeting their natural death when confronted by my Mom’s wall of practicality. With an exasperated look of an overworked parent, not particularly interested in dealing with a petulant child, my Mom’s response was “dekhtein hain” (we’ll see), but my Dad continued.
As per him, Patagonia and Torres more specifically, has featured in lists of the some of the world’s best places to visit for years now. New York Times has featured it, as has the National Geographic. But what had triggered my Dad’s interest, was that it ticked the box on many different criteria’s for his list of places to visit. His checklist runs somewhat like this:
- Somewhat off the beaten path – why take an 8 hour plane ride to Florence, when you can use planes, trains, buses, horse buggies and other assorted transportation with an unpredictable outcome over a two day travel itinerary? The journey as I’ve heard it said, should be the destination – right?
- It should offer strenuous outdoor activity. Universal Parks, Orlando would qualify for me, but did I mention – natural was part of that key criteria?
- It should be a threatened by the warming planet. So, with a limited lifespan that would not allow us to enjoy it in it’s current state as we grow older. Okay, so I don’t really have a snarky comeback for that!
Torres, checked all those boxes, as did Alaska (but that’s a story for a different day).
Looking back, as I sit down to describe our visit to Torres over the course of the next few posts, I am somewhat surprised that this trip came to fruition at all. Fate, choices, butterfly wings fluttering in China – whatever caused the happy series of events leading to my Dad’s declaration, Torres has been one of the most memorable trips – enough to inspire me to “sign up” (my Dad’s euphemism) to write about it.
I’ve started at the beginning, but let me go to the end with my next post and somewhere along the way I’ll catch us up with the journey itself. Because haven’t you heard? “The Journey is sometimes the Destination”
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