The Trip of a Lifetime

So all that day dreaming about exotic locations has finally paid off. I'm writing this post from Paris! The first stop in a ten week long adventure.

You can read all about it here. It's a travel blog I started many years ago, and completely forgot about. I am planning to use that space now as a journal for this trip.

I'm also going to cheat a bit, and reproduce the same post here (just in case you don't feel like clicking the link above!)

So Nike and I have just set out on what we think is going to be the trip of a life time – 10 weeks traveling across Europe and Asia. We started from home on 14th October 2012 and we will be back again on 3rd January 2013.

Nike quit his job in May and has been working virtually as an independent consultant since then. I quit my job in September to study further. However, my further study plans didn’t quite work out due to certain unexpected circumstances that came up in the last minute.  That was a massive disappointment, but suddenly we found ourselves with the time and the money to do a crazy trip like this before plunging back into the corporate world.

There were some initial reservations about doing a trip like this – the time, the effort, and the money involved in a ten week trip are rather intimidating. I think what really helped us was that we were both mentally prepared to be broke, maybe even in debt, by the time I finished my course by the end of next year. Now we weren’t going to be broke or in debt because of exorbitant tuition fees – so we thought “Okay, let’s spend this tuition fee fund on travel instead. We learn more by travelling than than by sitting in a classroom”. That’s cheesy, I know, but hey, we just needed an excuse!

We don’t really have a fixed itinerary. For now, we have spent a week in Paris. We are then flying into Romania, where we will spend about five days. Its an open itinerary after that – we are thinking of doing a loop around the Balkans – Bulgaria, Turkey, Croatia –  and then one of the Eastern European capitals, before making our way to Italy, where we will spend another week or ten days.

I’ve been to most of Western Europe as well as to the major cities of Eastern Europe so I wanted to do something very different this time, and yet I wanted to go to Europe again. This tentative itinerary seems perfect for us. We want to keep it open: we will stay back longer if we like a place, and we will leave quicker if we don’t. We may even completely change our itinerary midway if we come across something more interesting.

Travelling independently around the Balkan region is also quite challenging for us. We don’t personally know anyone else who’s travelled around this region before, so we find this part of the trip intimidating. But I think that’s actually great because it will make us step out of our comfort zone, and rediscover the challenges of travel.

After seven weeks in Europe, we will fly from Rome to Kuala Lumpur. My cousin, who lives in Malaysia, is getting married in December so we are going there for the wedding. My family will also be joining us there. We will be spending a week in Klang, Malaysia for the wedding festivities. Everyone, including Amma, is leaving after that; but Dad, Samee, Nike and I are staying back and visiting the Borneo Islands for a week.

Once we are back in KL from Borneo, my father and sister will leave for India; Nike and I fly to Koh Samui, Thailand. We will be there for a week – we intend to snorkel, get massages and chill on the beach at the end of a long trip. We will be spending New Years Eve there, and will be joined by Nike’s brother and his wife. We will then spend about 2 days in Bangkok, and finally back home.

Phew! I know! It’s a long, long trip. For me, the biggest challenge has been packing – winter wear for Europe, wedding wear for Malaysia, beach wear for Thailand. I’m lugging around a 20kg suitcase that looks like it will explode any minute. I’m not proud. I’ve however convinced Nike to put all his stuff into a 7kg backpack. Of that, I’m proud.

I hope to blog about this trip as regularly as possible. I’d like to post here at least twice a week; but I’m not making any promises. Like with everything else, let’s see how it goes ;-)

Down, but not Out

So remember the exciting new phase that I was looking forward to? Well, it didn’t happen. I don’t want to get into details, but let’s just say that this Big Change that was supposed occur in September, which would put me in a very exciting place in terms of career and location, didn’t quite work out for reasons that were beyond my control. I’d been looking forward to it from January, and couldn’t wait for the year to go by and for September to come soon enough. But when September did finally come, it brought with it the news that the Big Change wasn’t meant to be.

Of course, I’m very upset and extremely disappointed. I’d been dreaming about this for the whole year. I quit my job end of last month in anticipation of this. I shopped, I went to Bangalore to bid farewell to my friends there, I bought flights tickets, I spoke to movers, I made a to-do-list. I went on holiday, and then went home to Vizag to spend time with the parents before I was off. And then I found out I wasn’t going after all, that it wasn’t happening. 

I could even now probably go and join back my old job, but I think it’s time for me to move on. This job has been quite an experience, but I think I’m ready to move on another role now. But I need a break before I can plunge back into work again - I had imagined the Big Change for a whole year, I can’t just go back to work now as if nothing has happened.

I’m in Vizag still, and keeping myself very, very busy. Nike and I are planning a long holiday somewhere. The end of the holiday will coincide with a two week family trip to Malaysia for Cousin K’s wedding. I also need this time to think through what I should do next that will best suit my long term career goals – I have a number of interesting options ahead of me, but I want to make a careful choice in terms of what fits in with my career plans.

Meanwhile, here is what has been keeping me busy in Vizag for the last couple of weeks:

• I’m taking a course “History of the World since 1300” on Coursera. For a huge history buff like me, this course is absolutely fascinating. It’s the second week into the course, and I’ve learnt about Genghis Khan, the Black Death, the Ming Dynasty, Christendom and Islam, Discovery of America, the Columbian Exchange, Colonialism and the Baroque Era. The course is offered by a fantastic professor from Princeton University. I CANNOT wait for the next couple of classes. The best part? It’s completely free! Do check out www.coursera.org – they have close to 200 courses across a wide range of subjects, offered by professors from some of the world’s best universities; and all this absolutely free. Do, do, do check it out – I cannot recommend it enough! 
• I’m finally brushing up on my very rusty driving skills (I use the word very loosely here). I go driving for an hour every day. Of course, considering I am driving in Vizag, I’m rather sceptical about this practice being of any use if I have to drive in a bigger city with more traffic. Still; I had been developing a massive mental block against driving, and this driving practice has been very helpful in removing that mental block to some extent.
• I have also taken up a home improvement project of sorts. If you know the condition of my house, you will realise how physically demanding this project is, and also, how impossible it is. The maid and I spent three days just to clear up the guest bedroom and convert it into a room for Nike and me. One day was spent cleaning up and re-arranging the dining room. Other little projects – removing an AC from one room and replacing it in another, clearing up and re-arranging the open shelves in the parents room, dusting and re-arranging the books on the library shelves, getting a new side table, getting the dining chairs repaired, getting new bath curtains etc. – take up a few hours in a day. I belong to a family of hoarders; Amma leads admirably on this front, storing every little thing that strays into the house, even if it’s just a pamphlet from a few years ago. Samee is not far behind, refusing to throw away toiletries even if they are beyond the expiry date. And Dad just keeps piling up his old papers; convinced that they will be of some use in the distant future (he is probably dreaming of a time when paper will replace money or something). I’ve mercifully been spared this vice, and in fact, am quite ruthless about disposing things that I feel are of no use, and have almost no attachment to material things. But clearing the home of a family of hoarders is still quite an uphill impossible task. Our maid is quite wonderful – very enthusiastic about all these projects and extremely efficient. But for all that, I’m sure she’s counting the days to when I would leave.  
• I'm reading quite voraciously too. I’m right now in the middle of a five part series on Genghis Khan by Conn Iggulden. I keep breaking the series up with lighter reads like Wodehouse or Georgette Heyer, and it feels good to go back to my old reading habit after what seems like ages. 
• I have signed up for an online volunteering project. I am yet to receive a final confirmation of whether or not I have been assigned to the project, so I don’t want to talk too much about it before that happens. But I hope it works out, and it works out soon, because I am excited to be working on it. 
• I'm also spending quite a bit of time thinking about what I want to do next, researching possible options, talking to people in the sector. I have a tendency to just go along with the flow, but I have over six years of work experience now, and feel that my next move will be very critical in terms of the direction my career will take. I don’t want to do anything hasty at this stage, and want to think through this very carefully before deciding on what to do next. 
• Some amount of my day goes into day dreaming about the long trip we intend to take next month. We are so far considering the US, New Zealand, Europe (which will mostly be the Balkans), and Asia (Bhutan, Thailand and Myanmar). Sometimes, all our talk of these distant and exotic lands convinces me that we aren’t actually doing this trip, but just discussing this to pass the time, and cheer ourselves up – the exchange rates aren’t helping either! 
• I'm also FINALLY getting the time/energy to finish off a lot of little errands that I have been neglecting for many months now – getting new lens/glasses, submitting documents to the bank, redeeming credit card points, settling outstanding bill – little things like that which I tend to neglect in the daily business of living.

Phew! I think that’s about it. I had actually added a few more on my wish-list (specifically, swimming classes, and a community project) but I don’t have time to do this much. I’m trying to wake up early so I have enough time through the day to do all that I want to do. It helps to make to-do lists for the next day before I go to sleep, and I get a huge kick from ticking them off the next day. 

I can’t say I’m happy. I’m just not unhappy. I think I’m over the disappointment, but something happens to remind me of it, and I feel blue for a little while after that. But nothing can keep me down for too long. For now, I’m fairly content with my busy schedule, in fact, rather pleased with myself because I’m doing so much in my break, and I’m looking forward to my holiday and to whatever will happen next.

P.S: Does blogger have the world's worst formatting or what? It took me so much longer to format this post that to write it! (It shows, you say?) I've been thinking of moving to wordpress for a long time now, and this stupid formatting is really convincing me I should just do it.

"The Behaviour of Moths" by Poppy Adams

I've been reading a lot this year. In fact, this has been the year I've managed to read the most since passing out of b-school. I decided I'm going to try and put down my thoughts on some of the stuff I've been reading, sort of as a practice run for some book review programs I am interested in.

"The Behaviour of Moths" is the story of two sisters - what I thought would be a family drama (and it's one of my favourite genres) slowly reveals itself to be a delicious Gothic suspense. The story is told through the voice of Ginny, the painfully shy and socially inept older sibling who become a lepidopterist (a moth specialist!).

Ginny, who's now in her seventies, has lived in the family Gothic mansion all her life. The return of her vivacious younger sister Vivi to the family home after 47 years brings back many memories of their childhood and younger years. And through these memories, we realise it's not the happy family we think they were - jealousies, alcoholism, surrogacies, rifts emerge in the family - but all this is hinted, not clearly laid out, building up the suspense.

Adams is very successful in creating a very atmospheric novel. The large, rambling mansion they live in and the surrounding countryside form an almost perfect backdrop to this story. Adams gets off to a great start; the sisters’ childhood is depicted with care - their wildly different personalities, their closeness, and their feelings towards their parents. And the young women these little girls grow into are also very believable. And through Ginny’s reminiscences, we realise all is not well, and the happenings in the house and within the family, though they have happened long ago, take on a new meaning when Vivi returns home and it emerges that both the sisters have very different views on their childhood and their parents.

We gear up for the big reveal - whose version is the truth? Why did some of the characters behave the way they did? Why did some events happen? Does Vivi know something that Ginny doesn't? We gear up for the big reveal - but Adam subverts this with an ending that has you completely taken aback.

Unfortunately, I think this is also the books biggest weakness. While it totally works for it's shock value, it also means that a lot of the events and incidents are left unexplained. See...it's great to leave something to the readers imagination, it's good to have an open ending where the reader is left wondering about various interpretations; but in this case, Adams doesnt quite manage to achieve that and leaves the reader a little annoyed because of all the loose ends.

That said, it was still a very well written book, and I couldn't stop reading it. I finished it in one sitting on the overnight train journey from Kasargod to Bangalore. And despite my annoyance at the loose ends, it made for an enjoyable read.

When the shit hits the fan

So I came here to put up a long whiny post about how everything seemed to be going wrong with my life right now. I feel like I can see a bit of my life and plans unraveling in front of my eyes - and even as I frantically try and stop it from unraveling thus, I have a feeling that I am fighting the inevitable, that there is only so much that I can do, but things have to play out the way they are meant to. I'm rarely so fatalistic but they way things have been going for the last couple of weeks, I see little to be positive about, especially in my current frame of mind.

To cheer myself up, I planned a four day trip to Kerala with Nike for the next week. I booked us into a very fancy Taj resort in a hidden corner of Kerala. And since our usual budget for a hotel room is in the INR 1000 - 2000 range, this is serious luxury for us. And I thought we deserved it, considering how we've had a couple of major setbacks the last month or so. 

I was really looking forward to this trip. Even joking that this was the only bright spot in an otherwise bleak looking horizon. But right now, I don't like my husband so much. He is easily irritated, quick to take offence, snaps for no reason, is as sarcastic as hell, and loses his temper without so much as a by your leave. And it's all directed at me. And today, I didn't want anymore of this. I'm normally big on sitting and thrashing it out, even if I have to plead/bulldoze/beg/blackmail the husband into sitting down for the conversation. But today, I didn't want to talk about it, I didn't want to discuss it; I just wanted a break from it all.

I realise now that it's possible to love someone, and yet not like them at times. Which is what I feel towards the husband right now. Strangely enough, it's what I feel about my sister too a lot of times.

Anyway. Now this Kerala getaway has begun to nag at me. I don't want Nike to come. I don't see the point of paying so much money to have someone be rude and awful to me in gorgeous surroundings. So I'm pondering if I should go alone or ask a friend to join me. I normally enjoy the occasional solo travel, but I'm not sure if this is an appropriate place for that. I like solo travel in cities, in places with museums and galleries, not in scenic places wher you just sit around and soak in the landscape. Though they do have a massive spa so I could make like one of the heroines in a chick-lit and pretend I'm getting over heartbreak and use the excuse to get all sorts of spa treatments!

I could ask a friend to come along but it's really short notice so flights will be expensive and trains will be filled up. Moreover, I'm going for four days in the middle of the week so it will be difficult for any of my friends to get leave at such short notice. Sigh! 

Making up with the husband is an option, I suppose. The longest we've ever fought in our seven years together is about 24 hours. But for too long, we've been fighting about this, we've been making up within hours, and then the issue comes up again in a couple of days or in a couple of weeks. And this time, I don't want to quickly resolve this, and then have to deal with this shit again when I come back from Kerala. 

Aarrgghh! Oh well, at least ranting on this blog has helped me feel better and breathe easier.  So hopefully, see you soon, in a sunnier mood.

Quick Update

I looked at my blog after ages and realised with a pang that it’s been two whole months since I posted. June was a crazy month: my friend G’s wedding in Chennai, Nike’s birthday, endless work related travel across Karnataka, and preparation for the upcoming Ladakh trip. I spent exactly five full days in Hyderabad in June.

But June ended on a very exciting note, with nine of us setting off to Ladakh for the trip of a lifetime. We flew to Delhi, took an overnight train to Kalka and then by road to Manali. In Manali, we rented bikes and a car and set off to Ladakh. We were on the road for three days: Manali – Rohtang Pass – Darcha – Keylong – Jispa – Baralacha La – Sarchu – Gata Loops – Moore Plains – Tanglang La – Leh. We spent a fair amount of time exploring Leh and the surrounding region. We did overnight trips to Pangong Tso, Nubra Valley and Tso Moriri and day trips to Hemis and Sangam. We then headed out to Srinagar from Leh, passing by Alchi, Lamayuru, Kargil and Drass and Zoji La. After a day in Srinagar, flew to Delhi, spent some time with friends in Delhi, and finally flew back to Hyderabad.

This was the trip of a lifetime for us. Now I view the whole year from the prism of Ladakh. And suddenly, after the trip, all seems alright with the world. That’s how much the trip rejuvenated me and changed my world view.

I am in Bangalore on work and currently don’t have the time for a longer post. Hopefully, a more detailed trip report will follow, along with photographs. But for now, I will leave you with a few photographs.