Discovering Kerala in Phnom Penh

I have a perpetual case of fernweh - ever encountered this word? It's Germanic in origin and it means wanderlust. Why do I wander? I wander in search of what makes them different from us, where do the them and us merge - or do they ever? I think I have travelled to about 24 countries...

Art in Hoi An: The budget bargains

Everyone loves some good art - some like it classic and monochrome while others like me, well I love kitsch and colours and all things bright and beautiful! My home has never been monochrome, its filled with colours for they speak to me! So for a person like me, discovering Hoi An was like someone...

People Watching in Old Town, Hoi An

Every holiday has a lingering memory, an image frozen in the mind's eye - thinking of which always evokes warmth and joy. What was the most fun activity I did in Hoi An? People watching, of course! August is the last month of peak domestic season in this ancient trading port - the resorts were...

A reluctant foodie’s guide to Vietnamese cuisine

  Vietnam had been way down on my travel priority list because I believed the cuisine there rested on fish and seafood and the unmissable fish sauce. And once the notion takes shape, all the travel shows that you see somehow seem to tell you the same things too - everything has a smattering of...

Food in Myanmar – Some Eating Tips for Fussy Eaters!

This post needs to begin with a big disclaimer - I cannot claim the tag of a foodie - for I'm unfortunately a bit fussy about what I eat - fish, seafood and red-meat have rarely, if never found their way on to my plate. I'm allergic to prawns and lobster, the innate fishiness of...

The Travel Bug: It Bites Some Harder than Others

I'm on my final day of travelling through Myanmar. It's been ten days since I got here. And I'm in love with a country that's still learning how to embrace the free flow of tourists into their country. The systems are still not completely in place - public transportation, lack of signages or population that...

Mingalaabaa Mandalay

Over the weekend I travelled from Yangon to Bagan. The glorious town which has more Phayas shattered across the landscape is a sight to watch. That's a story for as soon as I get back to Yangon. Today I want to attempt something different -a story..One that will end in Mandalay. Perhaps the land of...

Monsoonal Musings From Myanmar

If Procrastination were a punishable offence, I'd be serving a life term. ~ Anon*  I have been writing about my travels as a post script, never as a continuing journal or blog posts. So on this trip, I have resolved to not procrastinate and at least have short posts that perhaps later I can follow...

An Ode to Nepal – A Lament for Bhaktapur

I am reblogging bits of an old post with a small post-script - It's a tribute to a country I briefly visited and always intended to go back to. Today Nepal is a country in crisis - a humanitarian crisis of a magnitude that might take decades to tide over. The death toll in the...

The Forgotten People of Bhaktapur

The majesty of the Himalayas need to be experienced to be even savoured while describing it. As my flight neared Nepal, the white, serenely beautiful range of mountains materialised as if out of nowhere, perched amid cottony clouds. I had resolved early that my stay in the Himalayan Kingdom could not end within the luxurious...