A Travelling Year: Introducing “The Stark Traveller”
Between February 2019 and January 2020 — that is, in an year — I travelled more than I would have travelled in my entire life before the same (~28 years). Including air and road distance (just between the cities forming the sources and the destinations), my travels in these twelve months add to more than 1,00,000 kilometres (>62,000 miles)!! Enough for 2019 to be labelled “A Travelling Year”.
In all, I travelled to four countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece and the Czech Republic. (If we count layovers — which were sometimes as long as 11 hours — I set foot on nine countries altogether). In fact, reckoning my homeland India itself as a huge country, I for the first time travelled across cities spanning its length and breadth, during the same period. There were times when I spent more than 50% of the nights of a given month in trains, buses and flights.
What demanded so much of travel? Did I roam around enough apart from fulfilling the intended purpose? How were the terrains, the languages, the cultures, the foods, the climates, and most importantly, the peoples of all those amazing landmasses? What about the differences? What about the commonalities? And finally, what lies beyond February 2020 — in the times of the anti-travel, anti-food, anti-people Covid-19?
The goals of this series are to explore the answers to the above questions, and much more. Apart from the continuous travels, Feb’19-Jan’20 was the period of change for my life as well: a move from being a student to a professional, from being guided to guide others, from staying in a city facing the vast calmness of an ocean to a valley in the enveloped openness of mountains. So pack your stuff, get your shoes, tighten your belts, straighten your chairs, and get ready to sojourn with me as I take you through my travelogue: The Stark Traveller.
The plan as on the date of writing this introduction is to write eight more articles: seven expansing the travels during the aforesaid twelve months, and one wondering about living with the possibilities of the new normal. I do have some content planned for each article, along with some photographs from the different lands, but for now I would leave you excited just with the titles:
- Tryst with America
- Romance at London
- India through IITs
- Rendezvous with Athena
- Delhi 6
- The Two Thakurs
- Himsuta
- The Year of Yearning
I hope to be able to write about one article per week. However, the best way to get notified is to start following my Medium account. Needless to say — feel free to drop in your ravens and to spread the word. Stay on…
