SCARED AND ALONE? GREAT!

How I learned to love it.

The first time I flew on a plane unaccompanied, was when I was five years old.

My parents were divorced, and living in different countries, and I was flying from London to see my father in Paris for the first time.

It was 1980 and I was handed off to an airline representative by my fretting mother, with an oversized red pouch hanging around my neck, which held my passport and ticket, and a large sticker that read:

HELLO, MY NAME IS ALEXI LUBOMIRSKI. I AM AN UNACCOMPANIED MINOR.

The stewardess, who sported a perma-grin, led me to the departure lounge and sat me next to the gate entrance. I’ll be back before take off, to take you onto the plane, she said.

I sat on the hard plastic chair, my feet dangling over the edge, hugging a small book bag on my lap, which contained one juice box, spare underwear, and a coloring book.

I remember not moving… At all.

I sat frozen, face forward, only slightly averting my gaze from one person’s legs to another. Never at anyone’s eyes, lest they see how scared I was.

As passengers started to gather by the gate, I noticed the pilot and crew walked past me onto the plane, followed by the first announcement for boarding. Keeping my head down, I raised my eyes to see if the stewardess was coming to pick me up.

Second announcement.

I allowed my head to swivel, as I craned to see if she was behind the shuffling heard of voyageurs, bottlenecking into the jetway. Nothing.

Third call, followed by a loudspeaker announcement of final boarding. A few stragglers arrived out of breath at the gate and sped past me.

She hasn’t come, I thought to myself. I need to get on the plane to see Daddy!

As a large lady, with three children, struggled with her folding stroller next to me, I pushed myself off the chair, slipped behind her and down the jetway, onto the plane, where I was met by a pair of white gloved hands, stopping me from careering into the passenger before me.

Hello? came the voice from the owner of the hands. Are you in a rush to get to Paris?

I looked up and saw a red haired stewardess, with bright red lipstick, smiling at me. Next to her, stood a gray haired, mustachioed man wearing a dark blue blazer, and a captain’s hat ever so slightly cocked to one side.

The lady… I stuttered, as my lip quivered. The lady didn’t come and get me and I have to see my daddy in Paris!

The Captain squatted down in front of me, as the lady with the stroller and kids pushed past me. He reached towards me, and gently removed the boarding pass from my pouch, and handed it to the stewardess, who said something to him before walking back up the gangway.

Right Mr. Alexi, don’t you worry, the captain purred, I think we’d better find you a special seat, don’t you?

I focused on the captain’s silver mustache, trying my hardest not to release a torrent of tears, and nodded.

However, instead of leading me into the main cabin, he gently ushered me into the cockpit and unlocked a small seat on the back wall. Would you like to sit here whilst we taxi?

My eyes widened, and the tear ducts sounded an immediate retreat.

When we arrived in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I was met by my father, who upon immediately learning of my mishandling by the UK crew, unloaded a barrage of French atrocities towards the poor stewardess, who had nothing to do with her UK counterparts.

Despite the hiccup of my first solo flight, something had changed in me. I got off that plane, feeling a little bit taller and a little bit braver, and a sense of the solo adventurer was born in me.

After this semi-successful maiden voyage, my solo London - Paris trips became more frequent, until a year later, when my mother and stepfather moved us to Botswana.

In January 1984, after a few years of schooling in Botswana, my parents made the hard decision for me to receive a more British education, and I began a five-year stint at a boarding school in Surrey, UK. This meant that every three months I would make the solo flight from London to Paris, to see my father for a week, and then onward from Paris to Botswana to see my Mum and stepfather. After a month’s holiday, I would fly the whole way back alone again.

It was terrifying and exhilarating, all at the same time, as I was led through various airports by a plethora of different coiffured stewardesses, who all asked me the same questions about where I was going, if I liked school, and if I enjoyed flying, which all had me feeling more than a little bit special. Sometimes there was a gaggle of us children, (is there a collective noun for unaccompanied minors?) We usually looked like a multi ethnic UN delegation, being guided by our own private concierge, to planes that would fly us to various destinations around the globe.

My flights from Paris to South Africa, were usually on a large South African Airways, 747 Jumbo jet aircraft, and more often than not, the flights were at less than half capacity. At certain times of year, the flights were so empty that I had whole cabins to myself.

South African Airways

These were the days when smoking sections still existed; which looking back, was comical. One could be sitting in row 29 in the non-smoking area, and row 30 would be the start of the smoker’s domain. How they thought smoke and the stale stench it created would obey these invisible boundaries, I will never understand.

But there I was; an eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve year old boy, with the run of a jumbo jet, hopped up on sugar supplied by a large bag of Cadbury Rolo’s, Toblerone, or gummy bears that had been given to me, by whichever uncle or aunt had driven me to the airport. Added to which, there was a never ending supply of Coca-Cola that arrived at my seat, with every ding-ding of the stewardess button above my seat. Yes, she absolutely hated me after the sixth hour.

Apart from the one movie, that played twice, the twelve hour flight would be spent with my face pressed against the window. I would take small breaks to run up and down the alleys, before jumping into another empty window seat, as I looked down through the cloudless sky to the passing land below.

This, I am convinced, is where my imagination was born.

It was a magical feeling to sit on the west side of the plane, as I flew south from Paris, over France and Spain, before hopping over the Mediterranean, from the greenery of Europe, to the sands of the Sahara desert. We would then fly straight down the spine of Africa, witnessing all the stunning views that it had to offer.

At times, I would see small villages in the middle of nowhere, or a lone man, crossing the desert, with several camels following obediently behind him, and I would wonder where he was from or where he was going.

Did he have children my age? Were they like me? What did they eat for breakfast? Did they worry about math test? What language did they speak? What did they think about when they woke up?

I would watch these imagined lives pass by, as the sun set slowly in the west, elongating the shadows of trees, livestock, and people below.

Finally, we would arrive in Johannesburg, South Africa, and were released from the belly of our flying, metallic giant, onto the runway. I will always remember, stepping out of the plane, as the first breath of hot air was inhaled, and the smell, which I can never describe. Spices, dust, grass, gasoline, the rich smells of Africa.

Those few of us who were connecting through to Botswana, were herded into a holding room on the side of the runway, where we were met by a single fan, which clicked as it rotated uneasily from left to right, affording each person a split second of reprieve from the stifling heat.

Eventually, a smaller propeller plane, called a Fokker Friendship, (which for a nine year old boy, sounded just naughty enough to raise a giggle), would roll up, and we were again paraded across the runway to board our short jump north to the Botswana capital; Gaborone.

The Gaborone airport was small enough, that once we stepped off the plane, we could hear the shouts of parents and siblings, who were behind the fencing surrounding the two runways and the tiny airport building.  After three months away from my loved ones, I had in my stomach two conflicting emotions; I missed them desperately and longed to be reunited, yet there was the seed of a feeling, that I can only describe as detachment.

Was this a result of boarding school, or simply a young version of independence, spurred on by my new role as a solo world traveler?

According to a therapist, who I once spoke to, it was 100% the effect of boarding school.

Britain is a tiny island and yet its empire stretched around the world, she told me. How would the country make young men willingly leave the bosom of their families, to move thousands of miles away, to some far flung colony to protect the Empire? Easy! Detach them from their families as young as possible. Hence boys as young as seven or eight were shipped off to boarding schools, severing any emotional ties, and ensuring the survival of the ‘great’ British Empire.

Mali

Speeding through my teens, traveling alone became more fluent, as I was begrudgingly sent on yearly French exchanges, arranged by my mother. The first night on any of these trips, were without fail, always the same. I would climb into a bed or sleeping bag, depending on where I was, curl up and wish desperately that I was at home in my own bedroom, with my family outside my door, a language that I understood and everything around me familiar.

Yet as I lay in that fetal position, I instinctively knew that if I could make it through that first night, I would be OK.

During my year off, aged 19, I traveled alone through Peru, to discover part of my heritage. (My mother is half Peruvian, half English). I spent the first week with my great uncle Tato in Lima, who was an incredibly good-looking, 72-year-old bachelor, who decided that I would act as a worthy wingman, or bait, in order to attract some younger females for him. After a week of failing to net him any significant catches, I set off by myself into the Peruvian mainland.

Not confident enough in the Spanish language to have any profound conversations with the locals, I would wonder solo through towns and countryside, with my LONELY PLANET guide book, and journal strapped together under my arm, hopping on rickety trains and buses, and joining random groups to climb the Inca Trail, or to spend a few nights on the floating islands of Lake Titicaca; always feeling like a child amongst adults, and regressing into my quiet, pensive, voyeuristic self, to watch, listen, ponder, and inevitably write.

Some of my favorite and most romantic moments of traveling alone, were when I felt the effects of a tall beer, which I only drank because I was too scared to ask for a wine, sitting in a bar, surrounded by laughing groups, or loving couples, with local language and local music; getting lost within the pages of my journal as I recounted all the events, memories and most importantly, thoughts of the day.

As a freelance fashion and portrait photographer, I have also spent much of my adult life on planes. Even when I travel with my assistants, I often find myself on a separate flight, or simply wandering the airports by myself; as over the years, this has become my role of choice to inhabit.

To this day, when I am on a plane to a destination less visited, I look out the window at the sun rising over the South China Sea, or setting over the Namibian desert, and remember as a child on another long solo flight, how my coping mechanism would be to romantically imagine myself as a cabin boy, standing on the bow of a ship in the days of old, looking across the endless ocean to the promise of an unwritten future that awaits him.

Surprisingly, my favorite moments of voyages taken, and places visited, are the silent ones. Being woken in the middle of the night, by the full moon as it rises over a sand dune in the middle of the Saharan desert, illuminating scarab beetles crawling over my sleeping bag. Gazing over a Tanzanian crater, or a biblical landscape in Mali. Sitting in the shade of a half sunken Spanish Fort on a beach in Essaouira, on the west coast of Morocco. Watching people’s faces light up, as they walk past me and witness Machu Picchu at sunrise for the first time. Opening the window on a flight from NYC to Shanghai and seeing the aurora borealis dancing in the sky; and many, many more.

As I write this from my plane seat, alone with my thoughts, somewhere over the North Atlantic, I am struck by how traveling has changed so much. I am in a plane that has so many movies on individual screens, that no one around me has looked out of the window once since we boarded. In fact, if someone does open a window and let any light in, it is seen as an annoyance for the movie watchers.

In the age of cell phones and wifi, we are able to travel to the ends of the Earth, without ever truly being alone. We can still listen to our favorite music on Spotify and are able to tap into social media and pick up where you left off at a moment’s notice. The act of losing ourself in another culture has become more and more difficult, with each technological breakthrough.

So did I like being alone and scared? You bet. After years of stomach churning fear, I have found a deep solace in it, because I have seen the riches it holds within each moment of uncertainty.

In closing, I will leave you with a short ditty about traveling alone.

Bon voyage!

TRAVEL ALONE

…………………….

Travel alone.

Be at peace

with the any anxious trepidation,

for that is where the wonders lie.

…………………….

Better to see the world

undiluted by a companion’s familiarity

and instead be the silent voyeur

wandering through distant lives.

…………………….

Listen not to your songs from home.

Allow every sense to be fed

by the new and unknown,

unencumbered by what you already know.

…………………….

Travel with pen and paper.

Let this be your sole companion

to whom you can decipher each feeling,

each experience, nuance, exhilaration and fear.

…………………….

Voyage with your thoughts,

allowing each new vista, smell and experience

to open the flood gates in your mind

of imagination, memories and wishes.

…………………….

Free fall into the depths

of who you are

and who you will be,

and there, exist in the magic of life.

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