Travel and the Power of Serendipity

By guest blogger Candace Rose Rardon

It reads like a recipe for disaster: Ride a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw over a distance of 3,000 kilometers. Across India. In two weeks. With no support. The frosting on this time-bomb cake is sticking two girls—one American, one Mexican—into the aforementioned rickshaw and letting them choose their own route across the country: from the eastern hills of Meghalaya to the Rajasthan desert, only hours from the Pakistani border.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

If you’d told me six months ago that I would be going on the Rickshaw Run, I would’ve said, “That’s great, but you’ve got the wrong girl. India isn’t in The Plan. Not for a while, at least.”

Because here’s the thing: I’m a shameless, tireless planner. Daily to-do lists, monthly saving goals, and, in the back of my journal, running lists for years to come—a rough outline for my life. It looks something like this:
• 2011 – 2012: Work in London.
• 2012 (summer): Get BUNAC visa for France.
• 2012 – 2013: Teach English in Japan.

And so it continues until about 2018, when I cry ‘Enough!’ and finally stop myself.

Photo by Shandchem.

But sometimes, the unexpected happens. Like a boulder being dropped into the middle of a stream, suddenly re-rerouting the flow of the water, the unplanned takes over the planned. The path is given new direction.

And that’s the power of serendipity.

I’ve always loved that word—long before John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale named a rom-com after it. It was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole, quoting a Persian fairy tale called “The Three Princes of Serendip,” of whom he writes, “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” Serendipity—it’s more about destiny than coincidence.

In March of this year, I went to Manchester, England, for a weekend travel blogging conference—in quest of tips, workshops and networking. The last night of the conference, there were three trips bloggers could win simply by dropping your business card in a hat for each. While I went so far as to enter, I couldn’t have told you what any of the trips actually entailed.

So when my card was drawn for the third trip and my name called into the microphone, I had little idea of what it was I’d won—but I soon found out. A place on the Rickshaw Run.

“What are you doing in September?” the organizer asked.

“Going to India?” I replied. It was a question, not an answer.

The prize allowed a friend to come with me as well, and the decision of who to bring along was one I took seriously.

Citlalli and I met in London last October on a one-year creative writing master’s course. Our friendship took its time developing, unfolding over many bottles of cider and nights at the local theater. Slowly I learned about how she once joined a travelling acting troupe to India, met an Indian guy, got engaged and ended up staying four years. When his family’s disapproval finally became too much, she left the country abruptly and moved back to London.

I loved the necklace she always wore, a thin black choker with two charms on it—a turquoise emblem from Mexico and a silver elephant from India—and the way it seemed to bring those two parts of her life together. The first time I saw her room, my eyes skipped from one bright sari to another, all hanging from her walls like tapestries. She handed me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita—and a Bollywood film.

At that point, there was little question of who to ask.

“This trip is opening doors for you and closing them for me,” Citlalli told me one day over lunch as we planned for the run. Although she would be returning to London after it finished, I’d since decided to stay on in India afterwards, to travel as much as I could and write even more. It was strange to think that the same journey could mean such different things for two people.

Six months after Manchester and with the Rickshaw Run due to kick off in less than two weeks, it’s now difficult to remember what I thought I’d be doing after my course finished. It feels like India has always been where I was meant to go next—and that driving a three-wheeled rickshaw was how I always dreamed to see the country.

And maybe that’s exactly how serendipity works: It tricks us into thinking we’d planned it that way all along.