Not all those who wander are lost.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Hello everyone, this is my first post. And I hope to have many more in the coming months. I got my hands into blogging, as many do, after graduating from high school. But that enthusiasm died down after merely three posts with the dreary undergraduate days coming up. However, I hope that this time the bug will persist and the frequency of my posts will reach a steady state soon.

From the homepage, by now, it is probably clear that this blog will be dedicated to the unprecedented and sometimes unfortunate, but always eventful voyages I have made over the past few years; and I believe that I will continue to have more as my time and job permits. Speaking of that, I am currently a PhD candidate in the University of Maryland, and hope to graduate soon. I know, I know what you are thinking. I am the last person whom anyone can think as a travel blogger. Aren’t the grad students meant to be piss poor, sleep deprived, and indoor creatures? Well, certainly there are times when we are, but who doesn’t want to have some finer tastes even with all these predicaments? And I tend to exhibit that by travelling, capturing moments, and of course, writing about those experiences.

But, but, aren’t there thousands of blogs available on the all-encompassing web? Certainly there are, but what harm will another one do? Jokes apart, I felt that there is a need for travel stories by people who are not dedicated travelers or travel-writers, specially people like me who are slogging in the school and still want to get out of the lab and the dorm sometimes to enjoy what is out there with their meagre bank balance. Hopefully they will get something out of this page, and it will motivate them to go out more often.

As an international student in the USA, and hailing from a country with a fairly weak passport, traveling is not always fun unlike the stories perpetuated by the social media. I used to be an opportunistic traveller for the past years, and went out of country only when my career took me somewhere. But that did instill in me a certain thirst for soaking in different cultures and travel intentionally to know the world. During these (mis)adventures, I was scammed by a local in Salzburg, spent night on the streets in a near freezing temperature in Oslo, apprehended by thugs in the streets of Rome, and lost my passport to a thief in Brussels. But I also got to know some of the nicest persons who, even with the language barrier, helped me to find my ways around an alien land, to repair my photographic gear in a time of the utmost need, and to get me a quick first-aid when I fell and badly bruised my knees and nothing else was available. All these have inspired me to connect with the people I would have never met otherwise and made me to realise that the world is truly a family, and the home is often found by sailing through many harbours. In a nutshell, this blog is meant to be both a cautionary tale and an ode to the wonderful humanity all over the globe. And last but not the least, I would love to share the moments that I have seen through the viewfinder of my cameras, and engage in the discussions to improve their quality.

So, stay tuned for the photos, stories, and adventures. Sailing through the Ganges, Rhine, Danube, and Mississippi, we’ll visit the Black Forest of Hansel and Gretel, cringe at the darkness of the concentration camps, look over the Langelinie where the Little Mermaid is still looking at the eastern sky, and be mesmerised by the splendour of the fall colours at Shenandoah valley.