• 12 August 2018. 3pm.

  • 30,000 ft above New South Wales.

I looked through the aeroplane window and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I recognised the route I had taken on my approach to Sydney. I grabbed my phone and took a picture of a distinctive section of the road that I had covered on day 32 of the walk, from Sanctuary Point (covered by the wing on the right) to Bomaderry (under the low-level clouds on the left) indicated with an ‘x’, Fig. 22.1.

Fig. 22.1
figure 1

Aeroplane view (top) and pilgrim’s view (bottom)

Full size image

In the middle of the upper photo, marked with a square, is the bridge crossing the Shoalhaven River that I photographed while walking, lower picture.

I covered 34 km on that day and was on the road for 7 h and 40 min, remarkably close to my standard 7.5 h of work per day. But looking down from my window, that full day of work as a pilgrim disappeared from my field of view in a matter of seconds – it felt as surreal as the moment I arrived at the Sydney Opera House.

The plane then veered inland, and I lost sight of my pilgrimage route.

Sydney and Melbourne are connected by a flight of just over one hour and they are both in the Australian Eastern Standard Time zone. It would be inexplicable to experience any sort of jetlag on such a short hop, but I did experience an acute case of ‘mind-lag’ when I got home

Astoundingly, nothing relevant came up when I googled ‘mind-lag’ so I will offer my very own definition of the term.

Mind-lag /mʌɪnd lag/ noun. The feeling experienced when the body seems to arrive before the mind.

A symptom of jet-lag is the struggle to stay awake or to fall asleep when one should be awake or asleep. In contrast, the symptoms of mind-lag include a spinning sensation in the head and repeatedly saying, either out loud or in one’s mind: “I can’t believe I am here!”

After re-uniting with my dusty backpack at the conveyor belt in the baggage re-claim area, I ditched my plans to take public transport home. Instead, I chose a scenic walk in hope my mind would catch up to where my body now found itself. A sort of self-medicating mind-lag treatment.

When I eventually reached my front door, I received the enlightenment that hadn’t arrived when I had taken my last step at the Opera House: pilgrimages don’t finish with the walk.