Instinctively self vs. other...

La proue devant Abu Dhabi

During the two trips, we called at 20 different places, on 6 different continents, each time spending an average of 3 days ashore. Each crossing lasted 7 to 15 days.

Désert du Grand Barra - Djibouti

Traveling that way - very slowly, with most of our time spent within our own community, in a restricted space - gave me a whole new conception of geography.
In a car, a plane, a train, you can only think of yourself as being in a transitory state, going from A to B. Most of the time, B is the only reason why you left A.

For us [except for the public relations staff] it was different, since the whole point of the trip lay in the work we accomplished during the crossings. Ports of call were only the most wonderful recess I'd ever had, and the notion of destination was insignificant, since our trip was a loop.

Fort Cochin - Inde

It took us days and days to go from one place to the next, so in a way every place seemed extremely remote, but during the crossings I was either busy indoor or outside staring at the vast ocean, so my mind started dividing space in 2: everything familiar on one side, everything unfamiliar on the other. In the former was the ocean, the ship, the crew, my work. In the latter were all the places we visited and all the people we met, on terra firma. In a word, the former was SELF and the latter was OTHER.

La Khazneh - Petra - Jordanie

The consequence is that even if you notice differences between each country, and each culture, your mind will still file them in the same category, whether you want it or not, because in each new place you also can't help noticing how different it is from your community. In the long run, you picture your home on one side of the world, and all those other countries together on the other side of the world, you and your ship somewhere in between, and that's the only vague and subjective notion of distance you're left with.

Dans le Wadi Rum - Jordanie

Of course I did not understand that before the end of the second trip.

Now, I can't help thinking that the frame of mind of European colonizers must have been somewhat similar to the one I was left with after two 6-month-long navigations...

De retour au port base