It seems that on your first real trip as a novice traveller you invariably end up with a full load of phone numbers and addresses belonging to some of the people you brushed with during your time out there. It also seems, except for rare cases, like they remain unused.

Once you get out again, more experienced, you've learned not to ask these things of people because you know you won't be getting in touch with them. Not because you don't mean to, but because things aren't the same once you've moved on or come home. You see how it is part of the beauty to meet people for a certain time only, share yourself, and go separate ways.

Then, there is always a third way of keeping touch. "I'll see you down the road." It sounds sketchy, but that's another beauty: the road is big, and it reaches far. Sometimes, like Tolkien says*, it appears to be a single entity. Blindsided and lost, when you least expect it, it just might sneak back up on you.

Even later on, perhaps, you may well find yourself so fully anchored in your life and comfortable with your friends and family that you no longer crave exploits and connections of this kind. You are, in short, happy where you are.

So in a sense, travelling appears to be a lot like life in general. You have your good moments, and move on. You enjoy the memories, but when you try to revive things lost, you more than often end up wrecking them. And the newer to the game you are, the stronger, more vivid and worth holding on to do your memories seem to be.

Take care of those memories, for, unless you're careful, there will come a time when they are all that you have, and when you'd willingly trade most of what you've done since then to get to experience them again, with your eyes as open as they once were.