When you're travelling, whether on your own or with a group of people, you'll always make many new friends along the way, and these friends will most likely become a part of your life and remain there for quite some time.
But what about those other journeys we take, and we meet a stranger who is travelling on the same train, bus, or plane. We converse with them and find out stories about their lives, but then when we arrive at our destination, we go our separate ways and never see that person again.
While I cherish all the friends I've met along the way in all my travels, I'll always remember those people who I met on the train, bus, or plane and never see them again. I don't remember their name, I might not even remember the stories they tell me, but I always remember that moment.
There are two instances which really stand out in my mind, the first was when I was 17 years old and with my parents and our flight got diverted to Istanbul instead of London Heathrow (due to severe weather); the second was more recently, on my train ride from London to Inverness.
When I was diverted to Istanbul, all the passengers on the flight were put together in this beautiful hotel (all paid and provided by the airline), and we stayed there for 3 days, unable to get back into London Heathrow airport which was covered in thick snow. During this time we met many people on the same flight, we spoke about where they were going, where they were from and slowly gained pieces to parts of their life, as they did with ours. Yet when we finally arrived in London, everyone went their own separate ways, and just like that we never saw any of them ever again.
Similar to this, on the train from London to Inverness, there was a girl who would of been close to my age too, sitting near me (along with a Scottish man who immediately became shirtless as soon as he stepped on the train, but that's a different story). I guess because it was such a long trip, and because it was so hot in the train, a few words were expressed here and there before eventually turning into conversations. Once we had finally arrived at Inverness, again the same thing happened, we all went off in our separate directions, never saw them again, and probably would never think of them again except when reminiscing about the eventful train journey we all shared (see my post travelling on trains if you want to know THAT story).
Maybe it's because these journeys were long and filled with delays and problems, and maybe because we were all so tired with the events that had occurred that the usual barriers put up against strangers crumbled down so we would let them in to our lives.
Whatever the reason, I'll always remember these small but memorable instances which did not greatly affect my life, but affected my memory just a little. I'll always be fond of those moments we have throughout life with strangers who seem to affect us just a little in that one moment, but then in an instant they'll disappear from our life completely.
Love reading your stories Tash.
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