On a hot Lahore afternoons, when the smell of jasmine is mixing with the smell of car fumes, it is not difficult to think that experience is something expensive. The magnificence of the Lahore Fort, the fine art carving of the Sheesh Mahal, taste of a good dinner at one of the restaurants in M. M. Alam Road all these cost, an entry fee, a bill to pay. It is the global trap of this mentality in which we think only in terms of price, in relation to value. When we go to a new city, whether it is in Rome, Rio or even in our own hometown we have an invisible list of paid attractions that we believe that the very essence of a location is hidden behind ticketing office. However, this is a serious misconception about what travel is about and, in fact, life itself. The most unforgettable, true to life and moving experiences can hardly ever be seen on a receipt. They find it in the times of silence when people tend to stare, in times when one derives pleasure just by aimlessly walking the street, and in the pure presence of people living in a world that presents all its best things freely. The opposite does not get you to where you need to be: the fatter wallet will not teach you how to see them and embrace these gifts, but a wealthier spirit that shares a curiosity will enable you to see life through the lenses of infinite and free wonder wherever you are on Planet Earth.
Walking is the primordial and simple act on which all free discovery is constructed. On foot to Mobility is one way of getting into relationship with a place on the closest terms possible. It is also to touch with your feet its pavements with their specific rhythm, to lose yourself in the rhythm of the city to discover the rhythm of the city. Yet we need to make the pedestrian walk a work of art. Making an architectural walk, forgetting, per se, about outstanding monuments, go to less pretentious things, to a wrought-iron gate, tile decoration of a residential door or individual window in an ancient quarter. Stroll through the crowded, mazelike lanes of Lahore Walled City and then on the same day the broad, shady streets of some area such as Model Town. The paradox is an eloquent, unspoken history of the city and its ideals, its advancements, its growth, a history, which brick and mortar can bring to life better than a tour guide. Give sensory walk a try. Go to an intersection with a lot of traffic and without opening the eyes, wait a minute just listening. Single out the sounds,–the voice of a street-singer, the particular jangling of the rickshaw, the far rumble of the call to prayer at the mosque. It is a symphony very specific to that place, the bizarre music which you can only really listen to when you stop your restless chase after the next view.
The architecture of the city is the set but its people are the characters and you are the eternal front row occupant of the biggest most unscripted play on the planet. People-watching is an art, plain and simple, and everyone that ever existed delved into the fabric of humanity in the place where they are staying. Check out a bench somewhere public, may it be Piazza Navona in Rome or a roundabout in Lahore known as Liberty Market, and just look. Wait until you can see the complexity of everyday life: lively chatting between two life-long acquaintances, a brisk movement of a business man, a loving touch of a mother who fixes her child scarf. It might be in these transient actions of the normalcy that the actual nature of a place is exposed. Another amazing stage of this is the use of public transport hubs. Take up a seat in one corner in a busy central station, or bus depot, and you will see the whole gamut of human emotion: the healthy tear of parting, the crowning glee of reunion, the sagacious forbearance of the commuting worker, the gaping astonishment of the novice traveller. This is no voyeurism, it is a sort of silent, passive ethnography, a mode of cognizing a people, not in their artifacts, but as moving and beating parts.
Out of the congested avenues and plazas, turn to these green lungs of the city: its open gardens and parks. These places are democratic havens, and they are a source of relaxation and aesthetic pleasure to everyone, irrespective of his or her status. Such an expansive urban park as Bagh-e-Jinnah is not an assembly of trees but is a backyard of the community. You can find here some families having their picnics, some students with their books sitting under banyan trees, which are old and you can also see tussles going on among groups of friends playing cricket. It is possible to spend a whole afternoon at the place reading a book and drinking a bottle of water and getting in tune with the local rhythm of relaxation. The same is experienced in Hyde Park in London or Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. These parks are museums alive. Equally, visit the local library. Those places are silent shrines of knowledge and community and so much more than free books. The rooms offer a cool climate, air-conditioned room to rest, free internet to plan your next step, free access to local newspapers and magazines, which might enlighten you with the recent events and cultural discussions taking place in the city. Head to the community notice board- this is generally a treasure trove of information on what is going on free in the area on events, concerts and gatherings.
A sure way of getting the pulse, of any place, is to visit its markets. In this case, buying is not the object but the experience that is immersion in local culture and it costs nothing. Visiting a food market such as the Tolinton Market that has existed since 1890, is a delight on the senses. Look at all the beautiful colours of fresh produce, inhale the aromatic first sight of local spices and listen to the xylophonic voice of customers and sellers haggling. Twenty minutes in watching a market buys you more information about the food and the farming of a place than hours of book reading. This is also true of the flea markets or craft bazaars where you can appreciate local craftsmen and get an idea of what are the things that the local people are in love with- all without spending a rupee or a dollar in your pocket. The other free experience that is also accessible to all is life within the gates of universities and the college campus life. These largely are architectural treasures, with well preserved grounds easily accessible to the public. It is possible to get lost in courtyards, to look at the architecture of the past, to bump into free galleries of art or scholars who hold lectures on stimulating topics of thought.
Special areas of everyday life aside, there are places of sanctuary of the person and of his or her collective memory; and most of them are free to access. The wonderful cathedrals, mosques, temples, and gurdwaras of the world are usually allowed to be visited by suitable visitors when they are not conducting prayer services. Entering into the courtyard of the Badshahi Mosque, Lahore, the magnificence of the size and the calmness of the environment is incredulous. We may find that feeling in a small English country parish church or in an exotic Hindu shrine in Bali. Not only tourist sites, these are places of active faith, and it is here that one may sit in peaceful contemplation, and Fox finds connection here with a deeper and more lasting strain of the local culture. Do not forget to dress decently, with headwear when necessary and walk in a quiet reverence. Likewise, lots of ancient cemeteries are lovely, serene and moving lands to tour. These are the outdoor art museums which consist of large sculptures, ornate gravestones, which narrate the history of those who made the city. An excursion in an old cemetery is a very silent thoughtfulness about past, existence and afterlife.
To get somewhat more traditional cultural experience, a touch research can open many of the world-caliber museums and art galleries free of charge. Almost all the largest museums of the world provide the day or even the evening admission is free to all. Some fast research on the internet can inform you that the Prado in Madrid closes free of charge during the last two hours of every day, or that the London national museums is a fabulous collection that is always free. This easy planning will save you loads of money and can give you access to some of the greatest artistic accomplishments of humanity. Art is not a limited concept though. The scenes of music and street art are also flourishing in every city and every city can change the art on every corner. Take yourself on an expedition to see street art, and murals, that can be found on the walls of the more bohemian or up and coming neighbourhoods. Raw, young, and sometimes politically involved, this kind of art is in-your-face, bare-knuckled, and raw look into the city youth culture.
Nonetheless, it ends up that a place is not just what is built, what is in the parks, what is in the art, it is the system of people who live in it. The ultimate level of free traveling is how to tap into this network. Why not go and take out a couple of hours to one of the local volunteer groups in your area? A soup kitchen volunteering opportunity, a community garden volunteering opportunity, a volunteering job at an animal shelter- all of them will give you an unprecedented look into the social context of an area and will allow you to feel closer to it. Find free community activities, like community festivals, or parades, or summer concerts, or check your local city site, or the community boards in the library. Attending one of these events can make you enjoy some celebrations with local people, and share the moment of collective euphoria. When we talk about having no price attached to any of these experiences, it is not the lack of a price tag that seems to join all these experiences: it is the presence of an open mind and a curious mind. It is more of a mindful practice of changing the way of thinking, shifting gears and becoming not a consumer of packaged experiences, but an active watcher and participant in life of a place. These are the souvenirs, the ones you will cherish the most, the better understanding of another world and culture, the slice of silent seemingly magical moment in an ancient place, the smile you share with a person you do not even know well enough to give a name to, they cannot be purchased. They are freely distributed, and they wait everywhere to be picked up.
It is not a passive exercise of letting it hope that there will be a chance encounter, however, rather it is an active spirit eager to get to know people and a tool set to discover with a combination of old military-style talking mixed with proper utilisation of new technology. One needs to learn how to look thus uncovering the free things and the various bits that are yet to be discovered in a place. In the hyper-connected age of today your smart phone is potentially the most powerful diviner stick. Social sites such as meet up and Facebook events will help you narrow down local events by date and most importantly price. One can be instantly equipped with a set of free yoga classes in the nearest park, open mic events in a local cafe, or free-to-visit art gallery openings. Using the power of social media, joining a couple local community groups in the city you find yourself in, you can quickly get a source of hyper-local information, find out about a community clean-up initiative or a small festival celebrating some local culture, and it would never be in an official guidebook. Such digital solutions must be added to the classical, but not out-dated, analog technique of asking the question. Even a real, aspect-seeking question, asked of a librarian, or a local coffee shop attendant, or at a store in a town, may be more valid and personalised advice than an algorithm: things like, What do you love to do here for entertainment that costs nothing? The conversation rather becomes a free memorable experience, a shock of real human commerce.
Having mastered your techniques of discovery you can start to dig even further, to more subtle classifications of free experience, which are openly displayed but hidden in plain sight. An example is the eye candy experience of watching local craftwork. In every culture the craftsmen have their shops and they are living museums. Find the neighbourhoods that have a reputation of accomplishing a craft. The serpentine lanes of the Walled City of Lahore may take you to place in which a metalsmith bounds elaborate designs into a vessel of silver, a woodcarver galls an elaborate chair-leg or bookbinder intends a new volume with finer threads. One is not supposed to buy their products, but to see what it is like. It is a great privilege to observe how a skill is inherited through generations and practiced with a great level of concentration and pride. It is an edit lesson in history, art and nobility of human labour, an identification with the concrete soul of a place which no trifle can duplicate.
Daily drama of dawn and dusk is another source of wonder which everybody has available to them, but somehow neglects it. Such intermediate magic hours will provide a totally new view of a location and will be free, other than an alarm or time. It is an amazing experience waking up earlier than the city and locating a point to view the sunrise. You see a location at the most personal time of the day, when it has not entirely revealed its identity to the outside world. You can pass by the street-sweepers, firing up the oven for the bakers, and there are the first buses coming to start out. It is a contemplative, reflective period that lets you relate to the beat of business and how life renews itself in various working communities day after day. There is also a sunset which is just as intense albeit different. The discovery of a location on a bridge, a river bank or a hill to witness sunset is an ancient human tradition. The disappearing light tints the sky with orange and purple colours which relieve the sharp contours of the city and warms everything with a charming, celestial light. In Lahore, it is an event of spirit-cleansing, ineffable loveliness to see the last of the kite dancers as they plunge in their spiral words against the violet sky, and as one sees you up there on the roof, spellbound, staring up, everyone stares up; the wild and drawn face in the potato-shirt, the savage-blooded face in the loose kurti, the fat face in the street gown, are joined in this one moment of absolute beauty.
Sport, also provides an excellent glimpse of cultural obsession and you do not need to spend a lot of money at the expensive stadium to gain such an experience. A good game of cricket is being played in Park or any open area anywhere in Pakistan. In Brazil, it will be the sporting activity of football on the beach and in the United States, it may be a match of basketball on a public docket. Get a seat on the sidelines and just watch. You will sense the naked energy, competitiveness, intricate team social structure and vehement screams of pleasure and dismay. It is not an ordinary game you are watching but a kind of collective expression, a physical language that says a lot about the identity of a place and what unites its inhabitants in the times of mutual celebration and friendly competition. Even the business areas inside a city can be voted as a free experience. Learn the art of window shopping as an anthropology. Take the luxury shops not as challenges to blow money, but more as purposeful museums of national ideal aesthetics. Look at the style, at the stylistic decisions, at the language of marketing. Read the covers and the titles in a walk through a bookstore and you may learn what ideas are in fashion and what the culture says about itself.
The internal rewards of adopting this philosophy and making free discoveries have a very high value that many times equal to the experiences themselves. It is a viable form of practicing patience. Free travel makes you go slow in a world that is time-frame with check-ticked places. You will get used to being satisfied with the rhythm of the day, to abandon the hectic fear of missing out (FOMO) that is so characteristic of a large part of the current tourism. The present moment is not one when you are in a hurry to enter the museum at 2:00 PM; you are just living, letting this day pass on its own. This, in its turn, helps to develop a strong feeling of resourcefulness and creativity. You are making up your own adventure because you are not given an itinerary to work by. You are taught how to move around in a more conscious manner, watch with more purpose, and take greater consideration to strike a conversation with a stranger. Besides being travel skills; these are life skills that create confidence and versatility.
The best that this could give you might be that it leaves open areas when you travel and then it is this open area that the serendipity can act in. The best memories that you ever have in travel are often never the ones that you paid up. They are the not-planned and not-anticipated experiences: the instance when you were lost in a small side alley and discovered a secret garden surrounded by flowers; the day, when a nice man, selling tea, urged you to share a drink with him and would not take a penny in payment; or, an instant in which you watched a sudden thunderstorm come in on a market awning, in communion with a crowd of complete strangers. These epiphanies are not time-table-able or even afforable. They are just there when you are not in a hurry jumping one duty to another, when you have given yourself the space to roam without a plan. This is where the transactional tourism and relational travel differ primarily. A ticketed attraction: a transaction: money goes out of your pockets, and you get a specific experience in exchange. A free, observational style is relational: you give your time, your being there and your unbiased audition to something and in exchange it gives you a feel of being really connected and out of touch with a place.
This does not mean that we should renounce all paid attractions because some are really worth their money. It is a temptation though, to treat them as a special case. It is a motivation to base your journeys on a platform of free exploratory research, and to pepper the stays with the paid ones as infrequent highlights. This way you will not only save an enormous sum of money, you will also start existing on a far deeper and more natural scale with the world. Skills you will develop through observation, patience, resourcefulness, and the courage to connect will make your life rich long after you are back at home. You will start looking with new eyes at your own city of Lahore seeing the free wonders that have been all around you. What you have learned is that the world is not a consumption piece to be carried out, but a huge, complex, and gorgeous present that is always ready to share with us its deepest secrets, provided we take time to notice, look more carefully, and take it with an open heart.
