Wanderlust 2021

Wanderlust 2021 

I am blessed with wanderlust from my boyhood. An elderly aunt of mine took me on my first train journey to Mumbai was when I was 11. We arrived on a gloomy, rainy day in 1962. A war was simmering with China. Shammi Kapoor’s all-time hit film ‘Professor’ was running to a packed house at Novelty in Grant road where we stayed. 

As we disembarked from Saurashtra Mail, I had no way of knowing that this travel will turn into a lifelong wanderlust for me, that an old aunt with whom I came I would soon lose to cancer. 

Life restricted my boyhood wanderlust to places around my small hometown, a cycle trip to a dam nearby, a family picnic by camel cart to a distant park or temple. The farthest travel from home in my memory was to Rajkot, mere 50 miles in 1965 when Pakistan tried bombing our hometown and failed miserably. 

These outings had sown seeds to see more, dream more, travel more, choose a path of unending journey. At 18, I traveled to Mumbai with two friends; not realizing that the repeated trips to this city of dreams would make the city my destiny. 

As a rookie salesman in a Dutch pharma company, I traveled to 20 towns in as many days in a month, wanderlust of fool and hardy. I roamed large, dusty districts of Gujarat; Jamnagar, Bhavnagar, Surendranagar, and Amreli, unthinkable cruelty heaped on a 22 years lad with a girlfriend. 

None of my jobs since then allowed me to sit behind a desk. I spent the next 45 years on the road, breaking barriers of nations, states, and districts, chasing my fate. My journeys took me between the North and the South, East and West, Patiala to Pochampalli, New Delhi to Nellore, hot and duty Ludhiana, to transcending beaches of Cannanore, previously unheard towns of Erode and Salem, Koraput and Kalahandi, Tiruchirappalli to Taran-Taran, rounding up with the magnificent seven sisters of North East India. 

I crisscrossed the hip-hop route of Ranchi, Patna, Kharagpur, Bhubaneswar, Paradip, Kalahandi, Koraput, Gauhati, Shillong, Agartala, Kohima, Imphal, Jorhat, Bongaigaon, Birbhum, Burdwan, and scores of villages, and mofussil towns. I visited tribal in hills of Meghalaya, ate food at huts on highways of Orissa, built greenhouses in rice fields of Kohima, drank a local brew in a hole-in-a-wall sack on hills of Cherrapunji. I traveled by long-distance trains, small commuter flights with the half door open, buses that had goats and dogs inside and on your lap, the open jeep that broke down on a no-man's-land near Bangladesh border, and walked miles in the rain-filled paddy farms on foot. 

God then made me pick up the world atlas at the ripe, middle age of 45. No destination was taboo. I wandered the streets of Cairo and Khartoum as easily as dining in a quaint restaurant called Hemingway in Caracas or shop in markets of Bogota. I would leave Mumbai airport Friday night and return Sunday after whirlwind visits to Caracas, Bogota, Quito, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro taking daily mid-night flights in a hop-skip and jump schedule. 

When I quit my work at 67, my mind was reeling with memories of this wanderlust of 45 years. Quitting work did not slow down my wanderlust as my wife and I continued traveling around the country to explore towns and cities we have not been to. In the last three years, we have scratched the surface of what we intend to discover. 

The year 2020 put a brake on our wanderlust. The misery of the pandemic allowed us to roam only the streets of Mumbai for nine months at a stretch. Last week, we drove down to Lonavala, our first trip, defying the year’s tribulations. 

We are already dreaming of new locations for the year 2021; a road trip to Goa, to begin with, Coorg will be next, North East later. London and Scotland are calling, so is California where our children stay. 

We never want to end wanderlust, even as we get older than we already are. 

Better to end the journey of life with boots on and bags packed.