Em's Twisting Kaleidoscope

Why have I never written about the best holiday of my life? I don't have an answer but I do have a solution. This. The best holiday of my life was the best for one reason because it was just that. A holiday. There were no schedules, no to-do lists, no places to see list- it was a vacation, a vacation in Thailand. So we had just shifted cities from Chandigarh to Lucknow owing to my dad's job and I'd had a horrible bout of chicken pox, so my summer hadn't exactly been fun or relaxing. There were two weeks for school to start and we had just come back from my grandmother's house after dinner when I suggested toy dad that it felt like a good time to go on a holiday. We looked up countries which offered on-arrival visas and viola! there we had tickets booked for four days later to go to Pattaya and Bangkok for a good week. No extensive planning, nothing- we just made a spontaneous plan and followed through and had the best holiday ever. Pattaya is a beautiful town...

Dubai. There is no way to tell , when you're in the middle of the city, that it's in the middle of a desert, an actual desert. It's overflowing with skyscrapers so tall, New York City would get a complex. The Shaikh Zayed Road is basically the main highway which cuts in between this huge pyramid of gigantic concrete towers. It's what they call a concrete jungle,  no kidding. If you told someone a few decades ago they could transform a desert into what Dubai today is, they'd tell you you were off your rocker. But then they would be one of those maniacs who underestimate the power of money, will and sheer brilliance. Dubai tells you what the human brain is capable of doing. You could never tell going to the beautiful beaches in the middle of the city that they weren't wonders of nature. Bt that's not the only wondrous thing about the Emirates (I pronounces it Eh-mi-rah-tees when I wrote that. Haha.) The United Arab Emirates was also the first time I found...

Lesson #552: Walk. Walk the city that you just found yourself in. You never quite learn as much about a city as you do when you walk its streets on your own two feet, stumbling across new and old, unusual and familiar, all kinds of things and explore its beauty by yourself. I think the reason I remember New York City so well is because I walked its streets so much. My most memorable moments are the ones I spent counting down the blocks left for the destination to arrive.  I just happen to be in one of those moods where I close my eyes and find myself walking down 3rd Avenue again. Walking from 3rd Avenue to Times Square. It was the night of the 17th of May 2013, my dad’s birthday and our first night in New York City. We’d just enjoyed a Turkish dinner at 3rd Ave which is usually the place for a lot of restaurants, all in line. The day had involved a lot of driving from Jersey and into the City, with a lunch in a Mexican bistro followed by the yummiest local produce str...

I've been in Bangalore for all of three days and I think the thing I like most about it is the freedom I feel here. I don't feel unsafe here, like I did in Delhi probably. I don't deny this could all probably be  a socially reinforced conception of how unsafe a place is or  can be but I cannot imagine walking down the road at 10 pm in Delhi with as much comfort as I do here, with no qualms whatsoever. Moreover, the people are nice and welcoming. Saturday night saw scores of Royal Challengers fans on the roads, one even posing for a picture I was taking! Anyway, moving on. The weather is brilliant, just how I like it. It rains once in a while, it's generally cool anyway and it's sunny while it's pleasant! What more can I ask for. The food is even better. I think I've harped on about the jackfruit enough to last everyone a lifetime so let me talk about other things. Koshy's. It's this age-old restaurant a little off MG Road on St Marks. It has q...

Bombay. Where to start and where to end on the city of dreams.. Wait, for me, it was the city of chaos. And I think in that chaos, it is easier for people to lose themselves and their worries.; not leave them behind but lose them. People are so busy getting through the minute that they barely get a second to spare for what the bigger picture is. And then somewhere, gradually, in that chaos, one step at a time, clarity strikes of its own accord. Just one step at a time. And in that chaos, every moment of peace becomes all the more prized, all the more personal, all the more yours.     When I think of Bombay, three things strike me, the crowd, be it the traffic or the locals where everyone is the same, just stuck; then there is marine drive, where there is peace and quiet and a walk which I never want should end; then there is the third high end of life, eating out, shopping, all of that: distant somehow. The one that I prize most is probably Marine drive. I have been to mari...

So I just moved to Bangalore for a typical month of law firm internship. But as I was spending the first two days with a friend, walking long roads on pleasant nights trying local delights like ripened jackfruits which I had only ever considered a vegetable, I was taken back to all those times in different countries when I had the yummiest moments of my life. While Australia is the most vivid as of now, I do not cherish the others any less though they have become fainter with time. Let me once again start with being annoyingly preachy about travelling. Lesson #152 Eat the Local Food. This especially goes the local produce. The most delicious and natural flavours that you can possibly imagine come from a place's natural produce. Take for instance, the jackfruit I just mentioned. In North India, jackfruit is a vegetable cooked as a savoury dish eaten with chapatis as part of a meal. I had never before even imagined that jackfruit could be that, a fruit. It's like the old deba...

It's been a while since I came back from Australia, the only country I've travelled alone. It'll take a few posts for me to cover everything that I did there and that there is to know, from whatever I could learn in four and a half months but let me start with some general philosophy. The best thing that can probably happen to you when in a different country is get lost. You can have the worst experience of your life at that point or the best one; either way, you'll learn much more than you could walking around with your organized plan trying to fulfill your to do list. For once, you'll see the place with your eyes wide open, you'll see people for who they are and in all the adrenaline rush and your guards down, you'll see a whole new side of yourself. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to mislead you into a trap where you get yourself harmed. ,I mean to tell you to be okay with letting go of that carefully mapped out plan of yours for once, to...