One thing that often feels surreal in my mind nowadays is how much travel I have been doing in the recent times. A little more than a decade ago, there was this craving in me to visit a lot of places. At the peak of my blogging spree, I read about a lot of places in travelogues and travel blogs and very badly wanted to see every one of them.
As I tick off Hampi, Badami, Pattadakkal, Aihole, Mahakoota, Banashankari, Madurai, Rameswaram, Cambodia and Myanmar from the destinations list, all visited within a span of one year, it indeed feels surreal that I have finally visited so many places that I have only been reading about so far!
Oh the joys of discovering new places and long lost erstwhile / presently thriving architectural marvels! Seeing the lives that people live in different places, their customs and their traditions! And, above all, the travel itself! As we take our kids in buses, taxis, tuk-tuks, autos, trains and flights, as we show them everything from a guesthouse to a 5-star accommodation, as we show them how the deep faith of people in The Supreme Power above made them build as great a structure as Angkor Wat or a Madurai Meenakshi Temple or a carving in the hard rocks of the hills of Badami, our children are learning as much as us through all the travels.
It is travels like these that make the otherwise routine journey of life a lot more interesting.
As always, I remember those wonderful lines from the film song, Rasali:
munnum idhu pole pudhu anubhavam
kanDen ena sollum paDi ninaivillai
innum edhir kaalatthilum vazhi illai maravene