However comfortable a waiting-room may be, it is not a comfortable place to spend the whole night. With hard steel chairs with immovable handles as beds and backpacks as pillows, the night seemed endless. We waited forever for the sun to rise, growing colder and colder as the night went by. At 5:30 in the morning, […]
Backpacking through Europe: Salzburg
We hopped onto the 12:34 from Vienna to Salzburg, delighted as usual with our Eurail passes. At Salzburg station, though, we spent the most depressing time of all. I was 17; my sister was 19. We had spent a long time away from home already. We had little money and less experience. We had been […]
Backpacking through Europe: Vienna
I’ve already written so much about Vienna. The lady in the train, who warmed our hearts by taking us to the dining car and giving us tickets as if we were doing her a favour. Our crazy attempt to find the Burggarten. The Schmetterling Haus. Mozart and crisp apple strudel. Vienna was much more, though. […]
Backpacking through Europe: Goodbye, Italy!
We tried to feel sentimental about leaving Italy, but could not find it in ourselves to do so. Italy was beautiful, but we were going to Austria – the land of Mozart and “The Sound of Music”! (Both came later, though, because we went to Vienna before Salzburg.) With our Eurail passes, we did not […]
Backpacking through Europe: Venice
Venice was the place where we relaxed. When we got there, we were told at the information booth at the station that there was no way we would find cheap accommodation in Venice at the weekend. The best we would get was a place that cost €65 a night for three people. Okay, we said, okay. We’ll be […]
Backpacking through Europe: Still in Florence
We had nowhere except the station to spend the night, so we wanted to get there as late as we possibly could. We had dinner at a fancy Italian place instead of on the street: it took longer. After dinner, we walked slowly towards the bus stop and discovered that the next bus (which was […]
Backpacking through Europe: Florence
We spent just a few hours in Florence, but they were truly splendid. As with every place we visited, it took us about 45 minutes to figure out where to go from the station and how. Finally, we bought tickets to Piazza Pitti, which had the most interesting-looking museums according to our map. The bus-ride gave […]
Backpacking through Europe: Pisa
Tempers were frayed on that journey to Pisa. What was the point of going to Pisa at all? Pisa was just a tourist gimmick, like the Brindavan Gardens in Mysore. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was the only thing to see; it could not be worth it. We would spend just a few hours there. I […]
Backpacking through Europe: Rome
We didn’t visit the Colosseum. I get that confession out of the way right in the beginning. We saw the Colosseum from the outside, all lit up and magnificent at night, but we did not go there at all to visit the inside as tourists. And today, when I look back I don’t know why. […]
Bhigwan
My European travelogue has to wait; I went to Bhigwan yesterday. A journey of two hours brought us to Bhigwan, which has a lake that is roughly east-south-east of Pune. Flamingos, they say, come to Bhigwan, and stay there till the end of February. We left home at 5 in the morning, but by the […]
Backpacking through Europe: Rome
People say that Italy is like India, and there are many similarities I see: honking on the road, noise, people talking everywhere … Rome’s metros are full to bursting point. The only difference between Mumbai locals and the Rome metro is that there are doors that slam shut in the latter, so you cannot hang out. […]
Map-Reading: The Crazy Travelogue Continues
I invite you to examine the map above. Notice where the ‘Ostello’ is. It’s right between the QT8 metro station and the Lotto metro station. When we got to the youth hostel the first time, it was simple enough. Sign-boards guided us from the metro-station QT8 to the hostel. On day two in Milan, we […]
The Crazy Travelogue – V
Coping with a new language, staying with people I did not know and attending school with friends who were much better at French than I was was too trying an experience for me to have written about my experience every day. I wanted to write, but it was all good intentions and nothing more. On […]
Indians in France
(Part IV of The Crazy Travelogue) My sister, our French correspondent and I were sitting on a bench outside a bookshop, when two young men walked past. After a few moments, they turned around and walked back. Ignoring our French companion, they turned to the two of us brown-skinned people. “Excuse me,” asked one in […]
The Crazy Travelogue: All About Food
This is part three of the crazy travelogue about the French exchange programme. Much of our day, especially in the beginning, seems to have revolved around food, if my diary is anything to go by. On the 22nd of May, 2004, I’ve written about melon (not exactly a unique experience) and a tart (‘not sweet’) with […]
The Crazy Travelogue: French Exchange Programme – II
‘I don’t think anyone cried,‘ I’ve noted in my diary. What? I read it again. I don’t think anyone cried. I frown as I read it. It is a singularly strange thing to have noted down. We were going on the French exchange programme – a four-week programme. I have no idea why seventeen-year-old me wanted someone […]
The Crazy Travelogue: French Exchange Programme – I
When you are seventeen and off on Fergusson College’s famous French exchange programme, everything seems special. There is nothing that is not worth noting down. Now, I chuckle in delight. There is so much to remember. We begin with what I call the ‘cycling-shorts drama’ in my excited record of each detail. We had been […]
Leopard III
It was a cold, cold morning in new Nagzira. We had already won the appreciation of the guides there because we showed up diligently at 6 every morning, despite the fact that we saw ‘nothing’ (read: no tiger). New Nagzira, as many blogs and reviews would tell you, has barely any animals. A few bison, if […]
Leopard II
It was nearing the time to leave the forest, but we headed back towards the rest house in old Nagzira. The guide needed to use the washroom. There are lots of deer and monkeys near the rest house, so tourists invariably stand around taking photographs. On that day, there were people standing in their jeeps, looking fixedly […]
Leopard
We did our research before we went to Nagzira. We knew there were barely any tigers, but we also knew that many, many tourists saw a leopard in Nagzira. Surely, in eleven safaris, we would see one too. The first, second, third, fourth (in Koka) and fifth safaris were over. We were restless. Much as we […]