FIND THE MANUSHYA IN YOU

I’m not going to make this about the travails of modern commercial travel. Given what I experienced, I am sure that story is going to be full of riveting edge of the seat action. It would contain the choicest and the most creative selection of words that helped me release natural toxins from my mouth. It would also be pathetically funny. But travel should be all about the people and not the mess that we create. So here we go. As I packed my bags and locked the airbnb apartmen

My 4- day pit stop at New York was unlike any other leisure stay but something I always wanted to do - stay in an apartment alone. It was a cold February and downright scary to begin with. I arrived on a wet, sub-zero morning. My key box outside the apartment won’t open with the code given to me. With numb fingers, trembling legs and chipped nails, I almost gave up, only to realise I was trying to open the wrong box. I so longed for the comfort of an over priced hotel. But ev

Lunch on day 2 of Medellin, Columbia was admittedly gluttonous and a walk up the hill around the city’s wealthiest neighborhood – Poblado, south of Medellin, helped us burn a tenth of what we ate. The remaining sat comfortably on the most uncomfortable places of our bodies. Historically and according to the locals, Poblado is where the city’s wealthy fled to when Escobar’s antics were at their peek and made themselves a paradise away from the drugs, sex and violence. Somethin

Next morning, our hospitable friends make breakfast for us and we conveniently behave like guests, offering only to eat it. Unshaven and un-showered, we head to a beautiful farmer’s market where I buy overpriced but promising honey from Yemen. We sit on the ground sharing coffee and talking about how we miss such a thing in India. Few business plans are made and dumped. The olives are fantastic and we buy a lot of it. A LOT of it. Funny how my stories invariably turn out to b

The flight to Dubai was uneventful. There wasn’t a pretty looking thing sitting next to me so no, this was probably not the good in ‘everything happens for the good’. I ask for a blanket thrice and get it 20 min before we land. Definitely not for the good. Note to self - never fly Jet Airways. But if it’s cheaper than other airlines, then screw that note and bear the crew’s indifference so that I can afford the next missed flight. All things being equal. An empty immigration

My friends just came back from an ‘unbelievable’ holiday. They couldn’t stop talking about it and how much fun they had when I met them for dinner. My partly jealous but mostly apathetic ears heard them but barely listened. I however realized, notwithstanding my lack of attention, there was something consistent in their insipid description of what they called wanderlust. All they were talking about was the hotel that they stayed in. How they were ‘looked after’ by the staff,

Travel has interesting ways to question your opinions. The preconceptions your mind conjured about a city, a country or a skin colour based on an overdose of movies, songs and alien-sounding names were never there. It was just your need to simplify and classify everything into boxes. So you dig further and question opinions which are central to your being. Those questions slowly change you and alters you in an inexplicable manner. Travel isn't great because it's a getaway. Tr