Travel Tales

270days of travel. 19states. 5UTs. More than 80days in trains, buses, flights, rikshaws, tongas, barefoot limping.

Hotels.Guesthouses.Huts.College hostels.Teacher’s accommodation. Waiting rooms.Taxis. Oh yeah, Airport toilets

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Getting robbed and beatenup in Gujrat. Losing luggage in Rajasthan. Losing direction,being deserted on a no man’s land between UP and MP. Losing mind,in Daman.Jumping off a train someplace in chattisgarh. Dancing with collegekids during the floods in Belgaum. Wailing with a dying paati in Tamilnadu. Escaping 3landslides in Himachal/Uttrachal by minutes. Meeting some people that have changed my life for good,forever.

Disoriented, while on travel. Disoriented, without travel. Loved it. Hated it.
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The war has ended. My restless desire to etch in words what I have been seeing has won over my gnawing fear of failing to do justice to my experiences when I attempt to write about them. When I initially part chose this work I now do, I less than partly could imagine what it had in store for me. It has now been a year since I started on this journey, and I still have not fully fathomed what I have been doing (and learning).

I have visited about 19 states in the last 1 year, visiting about 150 institutions including schools, colleges, NGOs and other Governmental organizations I have attempted to understand how education interventions at different levels work across the country(and do my minutest bit to make some differences), how and why various Governmental interventions are faced with innumerable challenges and how fascinatingly different every state in India is and yet very similar.

I don’t want to write about my work as I have come to believe that little knowledge is no knowledge and the wise are the ones that know how unwise they are. However, I have decided, as the year begins to end, to write about my travel experiences. I didn’t want to write travelogs, I still don’t. There is no point in writing what time I got the bus to vizag, and where I ate my breakfast – Such information about touristy places is there all over.

But I surely want to record certain unique and interesting experiences I have had, mostly because I realize that slowly my memory of travels are fading as life seems to be speeding at a very chaotic pace and I don’t want to with time to forget all about what has happened this year.
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I plan to start with my trip to MP. Khajurao, in particular.
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P.S: Yeah,I tried. Real hard. I can't. I'm giving up on this. Now who really can write about Chattisgarh,khajurao,Himachal and Andhdrapradesh while dreaming of Bali,Malaysia,Bhutan,Srilanka etc.Iam not going to record these travels, not keep an account of 2009.Let the memories fade,let new ones fill me.