Can colourful cities transform our travels?

Sat at the edge of the Indian Ocean as waves washed over me, I took a deep breath. The water rushed around me until we blurred into one, indistinguishable. I was overwhelmed by sensation – sand filling the gaps between my toes, the stinging smell of salt in the air. I opened my eyes to Bali’s magnificent Uluwatu cliffs. The water was brighter than the basic, finger-painted azure from a child’s story. I couldn’t tell ocean from sky. Bikinis and straw hats lay basking on a golden beach, and emerald green cliffs stretched their foliaged backs lazily in the distance.

I pulled my snorkel back on, and plunged face-first into the coral reefs of Thailand’s Phi Phi islands. Everything slowed down, consumed by the silence of the water. The only evidence of my existence was my breathing. Each breath felt like an eternity. The infinite blue around me burst into a kaleidoscope of the life it harboured within. Massive dead corals, jet black sea urchins, sapphire and orange fish I knew only as Dory and Nemo, mysterious turquoise species outlined by a literal scarlet glow, with names beyond pronunciation.

It is through travel that we experience colour in different contexts and our perception of its ever-changing nature begins to expand

I surfaced and drew a breath of air. My nose was pressed up against a double-paned window at 38,000 feet somewhere over the Black Sea. A blazing inferno stretched across the sky as the horizon bowed to the setting sun. I looked around as the sky spread its feathers – silky orange, to unforgiving red, easing into magenta. It seemed the heavens had created an ethereal tapestry woven purely for my eyes alone.

Unlike other creatures, the human eye is limited to just a fraction of the colour spectrum. We cannot even begin to comprehend the colours excluded from our rainbow, and within days of birth, we are likely to have already come across every colour we will ever see. Yet, our ‘limited’ spectrum conceals so much that we will never be done discovering the various beauties of colour itself.

It is through travel that we experience colour in different contexts and our perception of its ever-changing nature begins to expand. As I relive my travels, from the corners of Southeast Asia to where the skies turn from Asia to Europe, I struggle to share the unique qualities of these experiences without resorting to colour. I easily lose myself trying to describe our planet’s spectrum of colours, each tone with its own unfathomable facet of shades, expressions and infinite interpretations.

In exploring different parts of the world, our own experience is lifted from monochrome into multicolour

Travel isn’t so much about seeing new things, as it is feeling them, and again it is through colour that we attach emotions, fascinations, peculiarities and curiosities to new experiences. From the flamboyantly multi-coloured fishermen’s houses along Burano island, to the brooding grey skies over France’s historic Normandy beach, it is the burst or suppression of colour that allows the poignant experiences from our travels to have an everlasting impact and place in our memory.

In exploring different parts of the world, our own experience is lifted from monochrome into multicolour, allowing us to transcend our five senses. With this mindset, I felt the intensity of a red-hued sunset fill my soul with warm energy even as I sat in a chilly aircraft cabin, with the lively green of Bali’s distant cliffs also giving away a sense of the fresh, vibrant life concealed amongst them.

As we travel and discover new ways to experience familiar colours, we come to see and feel new dimensions through which to appreciate our surroundings. Each time I’m back home, the sunsets out my window feel a little more exhilarating, the air more rejuvenating. And so, one thing has become clear, the colours we encounter though travel give us a lens through which the world never looks the same again.