The Small Ceremony of Flying from an Island

There is a specific feeling that only Mauritians know.

It's the feeling you get in the departures hall of SSR International, watching a plane you're about to board. You know what the next 12 hours will be. You know the drink cart. You know the boredom of hour 7. You know the small kick when you finally cross into European airspace.

But no matter how many times you've done it, there is still a small trembling before every long-haul from here. A mix of pride, weight, freedom, and something close to fear.

Here's what those years, all those flights, have taught me. Long before Nim was ever part of the story.

1. The First Flight (1999)

Five years old. Mauritius to France. Ma maman, ma sœur, and me.

I don't remember much. I remember the smell of an Air Mauritius cabin. I remember my mother's hand around a plastic cup of orange juice. I remember the noise of the engines through my ears at take-off, and how it felt like the plane was pushing against my chest.

I also remember, oddly, the sensation of being handed off a plane at the other end. Of walking out of the airport into a light that wasn't Mauritian light. The colours were different. The air smelled different. Even the sound of the announcements sounded different.

That was my first flight. I didn't know it would be the start of a long love affair.

The verdict: you don't remember the trip. You remember the shift.

2. The Flight That Made Me Grow (2016)

Twenty-two years old. Mauritius to France. Alone.

I was going to do my internship year in France. Enrolled at IAE Poitiers, but with an internship up in Bretagne, in Larmor-Plage. A student visa in my passport. A suitcase I had over-packed by ten kilos. My mother almost crying at the departure gate. My father pretending not to. And Nim, upset that I was leaving him for months. Long-distance was going to be challenging. But we did it.

The flight itself was long. Twelve hours to sit with everything I was walking towards. A colocation with a good friend. A city i knew as a tourist only. A job I hadn't started yet. Responsibilities I had never had before. Saving money. Cooking. Doing my own laundry. Being someone's colleague, not someone's daughter.

I landed in Lorient feeling ten kilos heavier and also, somehow, lighter.

That flight is the one I mark as the beginning of my adult life. Everything I know about how to be alone in the world started on that plane.

The verdict: every person needs one flight in their life that separates them from the version they used to be.

3. The Solo Trip I'm Proudest Of

A summer. France, Germany, Austria, Italy. Strangers who became stories.

Somewhere during that year in France, I had an internship at Larmor-Plage. A small coastal town in Brittany. The kind of place tourists don't know about. A casino. A summer job. A very specific kind of independence.

Then, at some point that summer, I did something I still can't quite believe I did.

I met people. Almost strangers. Hours earlier they had been strangers. And I packed a bag and got in a car with them and we drove through Germany, Austria, and Italy. We ended up in Murano, which I hadn't planned. I hadn't really planned any of it.

I remember being in that trip and feeling three things at once. That I was very far from Mauritius. That my mother would probably not sleep if she knew exactly what I was doing. And that this, whatever it was, this whole moment, was going to be one of the great memories of my twenties.

It was.

The verdict: the trips you take when you're least sure of yourself are often the ones you remember most.

4. What I Did Wrong Then (and What I Do Now)

Every young traveller makes the same mistakes. Here were mine.

I was gourmande. That's the honest word. When I was 22 and travelling in Europe, I wanted to see everything. Every city, every neighbourhood, every museum, every corner. I would land somewhere for two nights and try to squeeze eight neighbourhoods into a Sunday. I would plan itineraries that had no space to breathe in them.

Three things I did wrong then :

• I over-scheduled. I treated every trip like a checklist. If I hadn't done twenty things by Sunday night, I felt like I had wasted the weekend.

• I planned badly. I confused planning with over-planning. I would map hours down to the minute and then be furious when a metro was late.

• I wanted to see too much. I skimmed places rather than lived them. I have photos from ten cities and clear memories from three.

• Three things I do now, at thirty-three :

• I breathe. I leave whole afternoons empty. Sometimes we sit at a café for two hours. Sometimes I read on a bench. That was unthinkable at 22.

• I enjoy. I stopped travelling to prove I had travelled. I started travelling because I actually love the act of being somewhere.

• I live. I choose one street to walk down slowly, instead of ten streets to walk down quickly. I pick two restaurants I really want to try, instead of trying to hit five that all get one bite.

  
  

The verdict: you spend the first ten years of travel trying to see everything, and the next ten learning to see something.

5. A Letter to 22-Year-Old Delcia

If I could hand a note to the version of me who boarded that plane to France in 2016.

Dear Delcia at twenty-two,

You are about to fly out of Mauritius with more bag than you need, more plans than you'll keep, and more fear than you're letting on. All of that is fine.

Here is what I need you to know.

You do not have to see everything. You do not have to earn your trip by exhausting yourself in it. The best moments of the next ten years won't be on any itinerary. They will happen in the empty afternoons you're worried about wasting.

You are much more capable than you think. The girl who got on that plane can figure out anything the next city throws at her. The strangers you're about to meet will become some of your greatest stories. Trust that people are kinder than headlines suggest. Trust yourself faster than you're doing right now.

And stop planning every minute. The best trips arrive in the gaps you leave open.

Also, and I want you to hear this. A photographer named Nim already knows you. You've been together for a year. You don't know yet how much of your life he is going to be. Take care of that one. It grows into something bigger than you can imagine.

Now go. Breathe on the plane. Cry a little if you need to. And enjoy every second of the twelve hours that separate you from the woman you're becoming.

You've got this.

— Delcia at thirty-two

6. And Then Nim (2019)

The chapter where flying stopped being a solo act.

I flew alone for years. Then, in 2019, four years after Nim and I got together, we boarded our first flight side by side.

We were going to France. I remember, very clearly, the feeling of turning to the seat next to me and seeing him already reading his book. I remember thinking, "oh. This is how flying is going to be from now on."

Everything since has been together. But the years before mattered too. Because the woman he sat down next to on that first flight had already flown solo enough times to know exactly who she was. She wasn't looking for someone to complete her. She was looking for someone to travel with.

Those years alone in the sky made me the woman he flies with today.

The verdict: the years you fly solo are the ones that make you a real partner in the years you don't.

The Real Answer

Twenty-six years. Ten airlines. Countless flights.

The first was five years old with my mother. The most recent was a few months ago with Nim. Between those two, there was a whole life.

If I could summarise the whole thing in one line, it would be this.

Every long-haul flight from Mauritius is a small ceremony. You get on as one version of yourself. You get off as a slightly newer one.

Do it enough times, and you notice something. You are, at some point, no longer the person who first got on that plane in 1999.

You are all of the versions of yourself who have flown out and come back.