You know that moment when far away from home, you feel perfectly aligned with the Universe, where the cacophony and white noise of everyday fades away, leaving you feeling rejuvenated, fully alive, and totally present.
For me, this moment occurred walking along the steep cliffs between Arnarstapi and Hellnar, the centuries-old quiet fishing villages on the Northern coast of Iceland. I was photographing seabirds nesting on the ragged cliffs, with gale-force icy winds lashing my face and hands.
This year my family (my wife and daughter, my parents, and my sister and her family, nine of us in all) decided to take our annual holiday to Iceland: eleven days in year, on a road trip we planned entirely ourselves. We try to take at least one holiday a year where all of us can be together, away from schedules and the demands of work, and across three generations with very different interests, nature was the one thing we all agreed on.
Iceland suited us because everyone loves nature and a self-planned road trip let us move as per our own pace and even skip or choose stops according to the group's interests and energy. I t gave the kids a DIY holiday of self-catering, picnics and 22 hours of daylight. Driving along the famed Ring Road of Iceland is a journey of discovery like no other… the terrain changes every few kilometres, always awe inspiring and surprising. The landscape so wondrously sculpted by Volcanoes, Ice, Waterfalls and Wind is a testament to the brutal power of nature and its massiveness that's so much bigger than us.
So on Northern coast of Iceland, as I struggled to stabilise myself along with my telephoto lens, while feverishly waiting for a Great black-backed gull chick to miraculously walk a few feet towards its parent. The bird had just landed from its jaunt on the savage Arctic Sea waves to feed it a slurry of regurgitated fish on an impossibly narrow cliff top. It was naturally rather humbling that this occurred while a grown and might I add hefty man like myself struggled to stay grounded in the winds.
The sheer joy of being present to capture this intimate moment in nature was what melted away the stress, tiredness, swarms of thoughts and the residue of urban living, where I fully embraced the magic of being on this trip and simply feeling whole.
Travel is something that not only opens up one's mind, but also makes one rediscover themself. It changes you in ways that you didn’t know, makes you reconnect with a part of yourself that sometimes get pushed to the background in the midst of life. It even simultaneously helps you create new memories while rekindling the embers of older ones, tucked away in a corner of your heart.
As a designer, travel also becomes a source of inspiration to fuel my creativity. Seeing and experiencing the world—its culture, clothing, landscapes, customs, spaces and people—each ignites a spark of imagination and influences my work, both as a fashion designer and as a costume designer.
Watching multiple blue and humpback whales feeding in Skjálfandi Bay near Húsavík, soaking in warm thermal springs overlooking the sea, tracing the slow arcs of a minke whale in the Akureyri Fjord, an eider duck leading her chicks to the icy water of the Jökulsárlón lagoon, observing puffins emerge from their nesting burrows and noisily take off from the cliffs of Dyrhólaey, photographing Arctic terns at midnight in Snæfellsjökull National Park—while getting pecked on the head a couple of times—and seeing the midnight sun almost set and rise over the Atlantic Ocean in a matter of minutes were some of the amazing moments of this trip.
But it was the smaller moments that will perhaps stay with me the longest.
The multiple rainbows magically transforming the skies above Gullfoss, walking behind the Seljalandsfoss cascades, Icelandic horses blissfully grazing in solitude at Höfn, my daughter discovering dandelions on the climb to Skógafoss and letting the wispy seeds blow away in the bright night sky like magic, making picnic lunches of fresh berries and sandwiches in open grasslands and on black-sand beaches an everyday thing, and grilling freshly caught salmon while overlooking scores of whooper swans nesting and courting in Egilsstaðir are memories that will stay with me for a lifetime.
Perhaps that is what travel gives us—the opportunity to step away from the version of ourselves that everyday life demands and reconnect with something that has been pushed into the background.
The mundanity of planning a holiday apart, what I will urge you to do is not only chase the ‘Instagrammable’ spots and strike the trophy moments off your checklist, but to really take the time and effort to disconnect from the version of yourself that started the trip and discover another dimension to yourself, while savouring the small moments that become core memories.
For me, Iceland was an escape from the demands of everyday life. Fashion is a demanding profession; you are always “on”. Away from cities, shops, nightlife and the constant noise of civilisation, I found the space to slow down, be present and stay centred.
After all, what is the point of travelling halfway across the world and coming back just as you left?