What countries do you want to visit?
There’s no time to be bored in a world as beautiful as this.
I procured my passport a few years after I got married. Until then, I hadn’t traveled the world and had found no reason to want to make the arrangements to do so. My first international trip was to Singapore back when the kid was still a toddler. On that trip, my visit lasted a couple of weeks and I traveled with a pram and booked the first row with the bassinet only to discover what a sham it was, since I had to carry her during take-off and landing, during turbulence, and meal service. It was a short 3-hour journey and lifting her off and placing her in the bassinet seemed to be a waste of effort on my part. That trip and every trip to Singapore I stayed with my sibling so my visits have never included the typical tourist expenses. I started traveling with the kid, so my luggage always included my trusty backpack/ diaper bag.
After numerous such visits to Singapore, I traveled to Nepal to participate in the EBC trek and that was my first solo journey. The trek was exactly as described and my experience led me to realize that I did not enjoy traveling without the kids and my spouse. I still carried that trusty backpack, without the diapers, but filled with a bottle of water and some snacks. Trekking through the Himalayas, especially to the EBC is both a physical as well as a mental challenge and a trek I would encourage everyone to experience with a group you trust.
We spent a few years catching up with friends on local trips until we relocated to Oman. From the tips of the majestic Hajar Hills to the Arabian Sea Oman has a very interesting topography that makes for some of the most astounding landscape photographs I’ve ever seen. Exploring Oman in detail can take anything from a rushed 5-day visit to a relaxed month-long visit if not more. I’ve traveled from Oman, to Amsterdam and Paris, and then to Munich and these have included a variety in our itinerary. Of course, the documents required for visa processing almost made me give up, but thanks to my spouse, and his perseverance we started our travels in the Schengen region and every visit makes for an extremely interesting story. This foray into Schengen started in Amsterdam and we’ve currently paused at Munich. We have experienced an AirBnB at Kaisserstrasse and loved every minute of our stay there. Unlike my earlier Singapore visits, where I just waved my hand to hail a cab, Amsterdam required us to walk or use public transport a lot more and it was a painful but memorable trip. Painful because I had never walked so much in my life until then. I developed shin splints that throbbed with every step making it traumatic, but the destinations more than made up for all that pain. I’ve traveled short distances in India by train and am not too confident about using trains anywhere else in the world, but the Amsterdam to Paris-Thales changed that perspective for good. The blurred countryside as we whizzed past, the plainclothes policemen walking through the carriages conducting random checks, and the most amazing hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted on a train somehow transformed a boring three hours into something memorable.
While we stayed in the city center while in Amsterdam, we booked ourselves into a hotel in the 9th arrondissement in Paris. Visiting the Eiffel Tower and the Notre-Dame required us to travel by metro- an experience that was daunting and interesting. So, if I had to restart my travels, and list them by countries, then I would start with Germany, going through Koblenz driving through the valley towards Trier just to capture the views, and then towards Stuttgart to visit the museums and then going through Berlin- visiting the site of the Berlin Wall, then to Dresden to the amusement park and then onwards to Munich from where I would head to Garmisch Partenkirchen and zugspitze through the village of Oberammergau to Innsbruck to visit the zoo and onwards to the Obersee Bodensee -water body that is surrounded by Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
From here I would head to Austria starting with Salzburg and then heading toward Vienna and then to Wortheisee and from there into the Austrian Alps and crossing over to Switzerland by road to visit Lucerne, Zurich, Geneva, and Mount Pilatus and from there into France, towards Toulouse heading towards Monaco and then North towards Bordeaux and then towards LeMans preferably in time for the LeMans race to soak in the chaos and excitement and then to Paris from where I would love to head towards the Netherlands via Antwerp, Belgium on the Thales. At Amsterdam, I would like to catch a train towards the Hague and then onwards to Rotterdam and from here into Italy completing Bologna, Florence, Rome, and Naples and then flying into Athens, Greece, and then into Andorra, Spain followed by Seville, Gibraltar, Malaga, Valencia and ending at Barcelona.
I know I am all over the map as I travel across Europe and while I am in no particular hurry and hence have no particular order to follow on this trip, I would ideally keep Germany as a base or starting point and then explore and discover at will what turns up on the itinerary. To be honest, I opened a world map and narrowed it down to Europe to list these places. They are names of places I’ve heard about or read or learned about in history and hence would love to go in deeper to understand a little more about culture and traditions.
I love to travel and have the most wonderful stories to tell of the places I have visited. The highlight of our travels has been the walking. I started my travels in Singapore, visiting my sibling, and learned about hailing a cab on the curb there. Since that visit so many years ago, I’ve traveled to Nepal, the Netherlands, Germany, Oman, UAE, and France. I’ve done the hop-on-hop-off, the amphibian ride, the metro rides around Munich, the almost empty tram ride at midnight in Amsterdam, the overcrowded bus ride in Paris, and the unique horse carriage ride in Amsterdam, the intercity trains from Munich to Salzburg, the tourist bus to Zuchspitze and every trip has been a unique and memorable experience.
Personally, traveling is a way to understand the practices of a community and to be honest, I would love to travel at least once to the 195-odd countries that are listed in the world today. Here I have merely listed a few in no particular order to kick off this journey. I hope to accomplish at least a part of this at some point in my life, but until then I sit and plan.
Just a little more 