Continuity and impermanence

Traces

Leaving (or not) footprints on the surface of the globe is our main concern. What should we leave of us and what can we take from the world? What is the picture of our passage? What image do we belong to?

Our footprint: what we are, what we want to be. As two 24-year-old women traveling back home alone, we would like to promote and encourage the women empowerment: it is something essential for us. Yes, we took the less dangerous way we could find; and no, it is not an easy way. But we believe that we should try without fear and without inhibition what is within our reach. Let's gor for an adventurous trace... because we are adventurer women!

In this way, we feel that we are part of the world. And as part of the world, we want to respect it: that is why we also would like to express our environmental and ecological concerns. Now a days, we have the feeling that it seems to be so easy, so cheep and so convenient to take a flight for traveling. People want to explore nice and wild places without realizing that we contribute to destroy it by using the most polluting means of transport. Our biggest regret is not being able to go outside of India by avoiding the plane (for political and security reasons) - even if we tried our best. Nevertheless, we want to show that it is possible to travel a lot, to discover a lot and to explore a lot while traveling by land, with as less waste and pollution as possible.

Therefore our traces will be made in the folds of the society: indeed we would like to visit friends (feel also free to join us here or there during our trip!) and meet new people, spend time with them,  so as to share anecdotes, ideas, narratives, songs, knowledges and experiences. Insides views, memories, sharing and exchanges - indelebile traces of a passage: it is the story we hope to write.

 

Way

Ephemeral events, but also continuity. With our little steps, we will have to make our way on the surface of the planet. We will have to go beyond the tendency of human beings to fragment the territory, by crossing borders and applying for visas. It was not easy to plan and it won't be easy to achieve. But still, we hope somehow to rediscover the magic of the landscape passing before our eyes.

We are indeed looking for a visible link between here and home, and also between the past and the future. That is why taking the plane to come back to Europe seemed incongruous to us: a flight would have been like a coma in the space and in the time. But now, we have the feeling that places will be connected to each other, just because we will concretely move from one to another. Therefore we are expecting a new perception of space, which traveling by land is in position to give us.

In this way our project's purpose is to respect the distance. Indeed we would to honor the 13 000 km we want to travel: with this experience of space by taking time to see the different transformation of the landscape and of the people, we want to construct a personal and living connection between east and west.

 

Journey

We also gave meaning to our trip, so that it has become a personal journey. By taking our time, by finding our way, by experiencing the distance in its authenticity, by observing the landscape changing, we want to "come back home". Therefore we see our trip as a kind of pilgrimage which will bring us back to ourselves. We want to draw our own Ariadne's thread in the world's labyrinth!
 
The paradox is that the base of the continuity is coming from transit and movement - it is actually poetics of journey. That is why the ephemeral aspect is so important: it implies transitions, evolutions and transformations. Indeed the identity of ourselves and the identity of the world are not fixed - they are never fixed. We are all together changing all the time, we are made out of vata, pitta and kapha. 

We sincerely and ardently hope that our way of transience will make sense to you as it makes sense to us!

A quick summary of the text for the ones who are more the visual type =)