On the strange mercy of getting lost in an unfamiliar city

There is a particular grace in surrendering to disorientation — in admitting that the map has failed you and the street signs are no longer in any language you recognize. I have come to believe that all meaningful travel begins precisely at this moment.

Most people treat getting lost as a problem to be solved. They reach for their phone, recalibrate, reroute. The interruption is minimal. The discomfort is brief. And something — I am convinced of this — is lost along with the lostness itself.

The value of not knowing

When you do not know where you are, you are forced to look. Really look. The bakery on the corner, the colour of the window frames, the way the afternoon light falls across a particular stretch of pavement. These details exist whether you notice them or not, but you only notice them when you have no other task.

Navigation, it turns out, is a form of blindness.

I spent three days once in a city I will not name, having lost my phone on the first afternoon. I ate where I happened to find food. I slept where I happened to find a room. I walked until I was tired and then I sat down and watched the city move around me. By the third day I knew that neighbourhood better than I have ever known a place I was meant to be visiting.

On returning

The strange thing about getting lost is what it does to the return journey. When you find your way back — and you always find your way back — you arrive at the familiar with new eyes. The hotel lobby looks different. Your own reflection in the lift mirror is briefly a stranger.

This, I think, is what travel is actually for. Not the sights. The estrangement.