Life, Lemons, and me.

If you really want to know why I went solo for this trip, suggest you give a read to this blog ‘Why Solo’ , else you can continue below: So on 17th March 2022, I finished office and reached home at around 6:40 pm, picked up my bag in haste, and left towards a city about whom people were quite fascinated (as I could see by their expressions when I told them about my plan to visit it), but at the same time, this was also a city about which I knew nothing! Except that it once was the capital of Raja Krishnadevray’s grand Vijaynagar empire, I knew absolutely nothing, heck I didn’t even know it was in Karnataka state until the very moment I booked the bus ticket for it, almost three days before the actual trip! So yeah, I packed my bags, still quite trying to recall the reason why I’d booked tickets for Hampi specifically in the first place, I realized that a few friends had been there before me and due to their help I’d been able to book a stay beforehand, and it struck me that calling the...

I've been asked by many exactly what made me do this. What was this madness that drove me, a guy who had never stepped out of Maharashtra (only twice, and that too for work reasons), into a place which is about 600 km+ away from his workplace, a place where most of the populace doesn't even speak the only three languages that he knows of, and a place which only the brave dare visit in the month of March, exactly what had happened??? A little bit of background here about myself.  Going on trips had always been a fantasy, but given my civil engineer father who almost always used to be away and busy on construction sites, and my homemaker mother who wasn't willing to take me to travel anywhere far, I didn't even cross boundaries of the only few districts my relatives lived into, right until when I had to step out to attend college in Pune.  When in Pune I again dared not to travel much, as I was, supposedly, as per my own conventionally trained mind, a student whose studie...

In Delhi, on my last day of the trip, as I was leaving out of the metro station and walking my way towards the India Gate, I booked a bike on Rapido (a service where someone picks you up from your current location and drops you to to your destination - exactly like Uber, but on a bike). So I booked it and waited for a few minutes, only to see an astonishingly regal Royal Enfield Interceptor bike come close by and slow down near me. I half expected it to be my ride that night, but my suspicion was confirmed when that guy seated on that bike took out his phone and called me up to declare in a 100% fluent English “sir, I’ve reached your location, where are you?”, and at that moment I felt the magic which has kept coming my way throughout the journey was still not over! With hesitation, I went up near him, sat on the bike, and clasped tight the umpteen bags I’d purchased from Sarojini for gifting around as he sped up towards my destination - Malviya Nagar. I was still unsure what this ...