YD: I love that question because I feel like there’s so much to unpack there because especially in the big cities we’ve stopped with each other and interacting with each other because we seek the place to escape into.
I think that it’s good to have it sometimes, but to me, nothing can replace a natural pocket that you can find in your day-to-day life. Where I live in Chicago, I live in a very noisy part of the city. But I live right on a lake, so I access it for a little bit and then I come back into the more loud place in the city.
Also, I wanted to comment on something that you said, Arati, because I think we become more… The more we experience these silent places and quiet places, the more we become aware of the sounds around us that give us that respite. Even today this morning I was walking my dog and it was noisy, the cars were honking, whatever, but I heard birds singing. I even made it a mental note, “Oh, there’s birds here. How incredible.” I listened to it and I paid attention to it, and I felt a little bit of that sort of balming effect even though I’m still in a noisy place. But I’m picking up those sounds, those beautiful sounds, and I feel their effect on me as well as I’m walking my dog.
I think this is something that you become more aware of as you spend time in places like this as well.
AM: You talked about the sound of birds, and that reminded me back to my conversation with Gordon. He was talking about quiet places and different sounds you hear, and he said, “You know the one sound that I call the sound of prosperity?” I was like, “What’s that?” He’s like, “Well, if I give it away…” I was like, “Come on, you’ve got to tell me.” He’s like, “Birdsong. Birdsong is the sound of prosperity. It’s the sound of life. It’s the sound of the fact that there’s air, water, food, shelter available for them to thrive, and it’s a sign that we thrive,” right?
I thought that was interesting, and I think we can all say that birdsong, for most of us, I’m not going to make absolute statements, but most of us, the sound of birdsong is just so healing even in a bustling city.
LA: Arati. Yulia, thank you so much for sharing your stories and also some of your quiet places, which I have a suspicion you were maybe reluctant to give away at certain points.
AM: You might be right.
LA: Hopefully anyone who visits will be respectful of that quiet. If people want to follow along with your travels, your storytelling, and Arati find the list, where should people go?
AM: Well, you can find me on Instagram. It’s @aratimenon, and you can find our wonderful list of quiet places on cntraveler.com as it happens today. Look for quiet places around the world.
LA: Yulia, where can people find you on the internet?
YD: You guys can find me on Instagram @insearchofperfect. As it happens, I also run a podcast, it’s called Going Places, where we travel to different places around the world, including some quiet places and fabulous places as well. We’re at goingplacesmedia.com.
LA: Perfect. We’ve packed in so much of the world into that. That was amazing. Thank you, guys.
Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel. I’m Lale Arikoglu, and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineer is Pran Bandi, and special thanks to Jake Lummus for engineering support. Our show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. Jude Kampfner is our producer, Stephanie Kariuki our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is head of Condé Nast global audio.
