"The old hunger for voyages fed at his heart......to go
alone...into strange cities;
to meet strange people and to
pass again before they could know him;to wander, like his
own legend, across the earth-it seemed to him there could
be no better thing than that."
-Thomas Wolfe
One of the most impressionable outcomes of reading is that we begin to conjure up images of places that we read in our minds and impart to them the hues, forms and textures of our own imagination. I seldom read non-fiction and the ones that I do read are mostly travelogues. One such wonderful experience was when I read Brad Newsham's round-the-world journey called " Take me with you". The extraordinary thing about it was that Brad happens to be a cabbie in San Fransisco and he undertook this journey to get himself out of writers block and also with an intention of bringing back someone from one of the countries to the US on a sponsored visit. His journey begins in Manila from were he embarks on a trajectory spanning Calcutta, Delhi,Cairo,Nairobi, Harare, Johannesburg and finally Cape Town from where he goes back and sets about writing this book. That was a time when travelling across the globe was a much cherished yet seemingly unattainable dream. I was pursuing my PhD in Hyderabad and I was content with reading and dreaming.
Soon things changed and I moved to Singapore. Apart from a whole lot of advantages, the most conducive one to my dreams of travel was the fact that I was now living in close proximity to some of the most sought after destinations in the world. Slowly, sometimes methodically, sometimes impromptu, I started exploring the various countries in S E Asia whenever I got a chance to escape the monotony of work in Singapore. Given a chance, I'd actually love to backpack through the whole lot of places in that belt in a leisurely manner but as of now it would have to be quick long weekend getaways.
Likewise, I visited some really exciting destinations- Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Cameron Highlands (Malaysia),Bangkok, Krabi, Pattaya( Thailand), Bintan, Kota Kinabalu(Borneo), Bali, Jakarta, Bandung, Borobudur, Garut (Java)(Indonesia),Angkor Wat,Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and most recently, Hong Kong.. I would like to start a series of posts on my reminiscences of those travels. I know that would be my feelings in retrospect, yet aren't those the best kind where you draw forth from memory things that changed you the most?
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| Garuda carved in stone, Bali |
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| HinduTemple, Bali |
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| Grand Palace, Bangkok |
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| Maya Bay, Krabi, Thailand |
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| Petronas Towers, KL |
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| Floating Market, Bangkok |
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| Rafflesia, Kota Kinabalu |
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| Kota Kinabalu, Borneo |
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| Domas Crater, Bandung, Indonesia |
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| Borobodur, Bandung, Indonesia |
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| Alishan Mountains, Taiwan |
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| Vishnu, The Bayon, Angkor Wat, Cambodia |
