Tristan da Cunha: A Journey of Mind

Recently, I have gotten myself into the habits of searching and reading about random things on internet. Not because I have lot of time but just because I feel there are so so much more to know, there are so many things we dont even care about or just take for granted. Even at this moment, when I want to find more about this amazing place Tristan da Cunha, it is as far as few clicks away. But... in our daily lives do we acknowledge this convenience, Probably not. But coming back to the title of the blog. Tristan de Cunha, recently I have been feeling little withdrawl from the daily routine and I just wanted to go some place quiet, just pack my bags and go and dont tell anyone... So, I started searching for places, and the farthest I could reach was a tiny village on top of a hill called Gourdon in France. Really seemed remote to me as in there are like 100 people living ther, few restaurants and yes overly populated with freaking tourists like me... I don't know, should I feel bad about myself or good, when i visit such small places, Sometimes I feel like an intruder, but again the mentality of a tourist kicks in.. "Aaah, I am not so bad.. I am bringing buisness to the village." Well I dont really think that way, but that is what many will say.. So, coming back to the point, Tristan da Cunha. I can bet quite strongly, that if you are not curious or weird, for all intent and purposes you will  not care about this place or probably not even heard about it. The way I landed on this beautiful geographical feature, is searching for "Remotest place on earth." Because, as I discussed with many friends of mine about my plans for spending one year in Tibet to do some soul searching and really think what should I really do next, I realised I have the tendency to detach. So, I landed on this place and in last 2 days, I have been gathering information about it, as in what is it like to be there? What do the people do there? Is it really that remote ? Turns out, it surpasses everything i have ever expected, and it made me re-think about loneliness, remoteness and my daily life. I am sure, people whom I meet every day won't really understand this feeling. And by no means, I am being disrespectful to them. They are really some of the smartest people, but they wont understand it because, I wont be able to take them to the same page as I am.

So, it turns out this place is a British colony in Southern hemisphere in Atlantic Ocean, a small island with a population of just 290-300 people and just to give you an idea of the remoteness, its 1500 nautical miles from any other piece of land, and if you want to reach there, the only way to go is taking a Royal Mail Ship, which goes to this island once a year carrying post cards, letters and other STUFFs from UK and it takes 3 weeks in the sea to reach there sailing along the Mid Atlantic ridge through St. Helena island. So, that is to give an idea of the remoteness. When I think about it now, I dont know, all my thoughts about going to some place lonely and remote seems more romantic and Hollywood-ish to me. Really it is soooo far.

Source: Amusing Planet

I mean if we take a moment to think about the people's lives there, it is for all intent and purposes a different world, and I do not know, my heart goes out to them, when I compare our lives and theirs. Sure, I am not saying they are not happy, Ofcourse, they might me, from what I can say, for sure, I do not have a sure way of knowing. The stapled food in this island is potatoes, and taking out potatoes from the ground is the communal Saturday activity. I mean there is a place in the world, where probably the whole population has not seen an airplane, ok forget about airplanes, it is in middle of nowhere, the bird sightings are rare too, and here we are complaining about no internet connectivity on the airplanes and sooo amny mundane things, I cannot even start. The place has just one police office and one single road and walking is the only means of getting around. Few years ago, in 1961, there were volcanic eruptions, on the island and it was evacuated for 2 years and people were stationed in UK, and then sent back. There are some videos on youtube about interviews with  them. Really, they didnt know about television, and till 100 years ago, the buisness practice was barter system and probably even today, it will be sole place on earth, where money seems to have much less value than human relationships. For a community of 300 people to be able to live, through centuries, the real values of relationships, unconditional friendships, helping out each other, love and care for your fellow beings, those are the currency of Tristan da Cunha.

Volcano in Tristan da Cunha Source: HowStuffWorks.com

But, the volcanic eruptions bought the whole world's attention to this tiny island, and they got the modern facilities, which changed the island forever, but they are still far far behind the lifestyles you and I have. From what I could read, the means of communications is just one telephone in the island, so probably we should not consider high speed internet being a possibility. Even reading books, and getting to see pictures of outside world is a real treat for the Tristanians. And I get bored with playing the same video game second time. Somewhere deep down I feel ashamed and really small, when pity the people who complain about things they do not have and really forget to appreciate what do they have.

So, by this time, you might be wondering, ok it is a British colony, if they do not like it there can't they just come to UK. and I am sorry to disappoint you my friends, no they are not British citizens so no they cannot work in UK or other places. They cannot get the education or skills needed to survive in this world, so I am amazed that the UK cannot grant citizenship to these 300 people, just to give them a choice for their lives.

Talking about gender discrimination, you will be surprised to know that in this place, the men and women connot sit together as per customs. The women still have to do the daily chores of the house and really looking at the interviews, it seemed that they really do not have a choice to do things otherwise, and they have just accepted the tradition.

The most famous thing about this amazing place are the stamps, they are really cool, and is a really worthy of collection, if you are a collector. I am not but I think I will still get some. For interested people, you can order them here http://www.tristandc.com/postoffice.php . And I think you should, just to support this island and show them that we care. And you will have something with you coming from the remotest place on eath, which is awesome.

 Source: Tristan De Cunha Post Office

Also, I am torn between the thoughts, that whether to consider this place a heaven or a prison, because of obvious reasons. On one side, there is the serenity which we long for day in and day out in out busy lives, and on the other hand also it is just too far. So, it makes me question, what we really want? Which brings me to another point, that more often than not, we are unhappy because we want contradicting things, we want serenity but we dont want to be soo remotely located too. We want good grades, but also dont want to work too hard. We want the latest technologies, but we do not want to pay for it. Life is indeed an interesting optimization problem.

So, at the end of the day, now that I think about my life and things surrounding my life, I am really really grateful for every single thing I have starting from something as small as being able to just see different people every day as I walk down the street and hear a different music anytime I want, being able to talk to anyone anywhere in the world and eat different food every day if I want to. But, most importantly I feel we all should value choices that we have in life and be thankful for that, because some people don't have them.