Traveling is to undress oneself

By Acharya Tadany
Published in Diário de Santa Maria, 24 September 2026

Photo: Fontana di Trevi. Rome. Italy.

Traveling is to withdraw from the fabrics of routine, from the veils of predictability, and from the comfortable mantle of familiarity. For the pilgrim, traveling is to leave behind the nest warmed by habit and to venture into the wind that blows from the unpredictable and the unexpected.

Traveling is like leaping from a stage where we rehearse the same role every day, to enter an unknown play, without a script, without direction, but with the whole soul surrendered to the improvisation of life. That is, it is to leave the known, the predictable, and the apparently safe, for that which we do not know. Where every corner is a new world, every glance a new galaxy, and every garment a universe apart. Where flavors dance with rhythms our palates do not yet know, and words, even when understood, carry intonations that tell different stories.

Traveling is to cross mirrors where the streets are corridors of another time, where the façades of houses, like pages of an old book, whisper legends our eyes have never read. Smells are notes of a symphony that defy our memory. Architectures speak other symbols, raised by hands that worshipped other gods and celebrated other myths. And people, with their gestures, habits, and silences, reveal cultures that walked along paths parallel to our own.

And we, what happens to us when we travel?

We are strangers to ourselves. Lost in this new world, not knowing how to act or react. Like leaves loose in the autumn of another continent. Like seeds that land on strange soils, but carry within themselves the promise of blossoming.

However, despite the magic and beauty of this narrative, in essence, nothing is so new because this is how we arrived on this planet at birth. Empty of certainties, but full of senses in formation. We arrived naked, not only of clothes, but of references. And even so, life, in all its goodness and grandeur, welcomed us with its strangeness. Therefore, when we travel, what we are really doing is reconnecting with that natural curiosity of our essences — that is, that majestic place where we were unknown to everything, yet still opened ourselves to the world with eyes shining with fascination, ecstasy, and enchantment.

Traveling, consequently, is to be reborn.

It is to allow wonder to visit us again, like children enchanted by a butterfly that lands for the first time on our hands. We are enchanted by glances we do not understand, but feel. By gestures we do not copy, but respect. By structures we did not build, but admire as if they were our own.

For in their essence, this world we visit also represents us through other bodies, other words, and other times. People who, like us, once also felt undressed — even in the place where they would come to build their dreams and their own lives.

Traveling is, therefore, to remember that we are eternal travelers, even when we are at home.

It is to accept that the world is not something one possesses, but something one contemplates. And that the true baggage we carry is made of wonders, discoveries, and the infinite ways of being human — fascinatingly human.

Translated to English by DeepSeek.

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