Travel Diaries

I step out from under the dirty brown awning of my three-story apartment building. The grey cracked concrete walkway to the street is littered with a soggy, muddy old copy of the Los Angeles Times, pages falling out of the flimsy string holding it together. An empty Starbucks plastic cup (tall) rolls over brightly printed car wash coupons, charred cigarette butts sneak from under the sun-baked yellow grass, dead bougainvillea flowers sit degenerating into pulp…

Landing in Florida As the plane circled Orlando, I had a feeling that I was flying over a gigantic golf course. Orlando is not just the city of theme parks, it is a theme park. Well manicured gardens, little ponds, white roads, and clearly outlined neighborhoods, it appears very pretty from the top. This appeared to be a very promising beginning to our seven day trip to Florida. Stepping out of the airport, it was…

Note I wrote this in my journal ages ago on our first trip back to India in 2012 after having lived in the US for 3 years. Posting it here because I feel it’s still relevant. Things have changed over the last decade or so in India. There has been development although a little skewed. The situation for people like me has gotten better. Unfortunately, people like me make a very small part of this…

Starting the day with a bus ride to Chora Museum On our third day, we had to get across town to the Chora Museum, one of the last standing churches of the Byzantium Empire. The Chora museum is famous for its large collection of gold mosaic work. As we boarded a packed bus at Galata Bridge, I was a little nervous because crowds and new places do that to me. We also had no clue…

First Impressions The plane circled the skies waiting for its turn in the queue for the landing strip. I craned my eyes to get a glimpse of this ancient city over the winter rain clouds.  Istanbul was a mosaic of red rooftops, mosque domes, and minarets. Smoke escaped from the chimneys of the houses in the early morning, and the grey sky promised a cold and cheerless day. After exiting immigration we searched the exit…

He came out of nowhere. K and I were standing against the railings of the Galata Bridge in Istanbul, watching the sea gulls dance over the murky waters of Bosporus when a balding man materialized next to us. He was wearing a blue wind cheater and bobbing up and down excitedly. “You hungry? You come inside my restaurant,” he said and pointed to one of the restaurants on the bridge. “I will make fifteen percent…

In 2011, my mother traveled half way across the world to spend some quality time with us. This was her first time ever in the US and I thought it was interesting to see what she thinks of this place. So I present, her take on the ways of America after spending a few weeks here.  You can also follow her on her blog On the Top of my Mind . Her guest post below: ——————————————————————–…

In September of this year, Kapil and I moved out of St. Louis after having lived there for almost 3 years. Since I had been clamoring for the big city life for so long I had not anticipated the wave of loss to hit me as I got ready to “leave on a jet plane”. Putting my thoughts to paper, I had planned to publish this post some time ago, but the craziness of the…