When we travel, our brains are subjected to new stimuli of all kinds. This could potentially put us into learning mode – once you get into that mode, the brain absorbs stuff like a sponge. It works out differently for different people – some people remember routes even though they’ve gone to a place only once, some remember things they saw in vivid detail, some remember smells and some remember sounds. It is instant teleportation.
For example, an Indian travelling to Europe for the first time has many things to be astonished about – the cleanliness, lane discipline on the roads, the weather (sorry Bangalore folks, I don’t think we can boast about it anymore), to quote a few.
Going by the above definition, it is clear that any new experience can trigger this sort of plasticity in the brain. Which explains why some sights, sounds and smells can take us back to the place where we first experienced them – travelling through time and space. In this blog, I’ll take you on a journey through a few songs which take me back to some places.
In April 2020, the world had been shut down. This statement might sound weirdly apocalyptic to someone who hasn’t experienced those 2 years but thankfully, we made it through. Those years helped a lot of people take a pause from their super busy lives and explore hobbies and interests. I discovered pockets of time where I could do more brain work. For example, cooking – I had to be physically present but my brain wanted to do more. That’s when I discovered the world of podcasts and became a podcast learner.
One of the first things I picked up on podcast was learning more about the history of Ancient Egypt. After our visit to Egypt in 2019 (which I have covered in detail in earlier blogs), I was fascinated by the level of planning and attention-to-detail that ancient Egyptians had – creating things that survived for more than 3000 years. I went on the Google Podcast app and started listening to the History of Egypt podcast. I loved the story telling and how the episodes were structured and got hooked.
It had become a daily routine – wake up, finish off the morning hygiene routine and get into the kitchen to prepare the meals for the day (yup, this was a daily activity during Covid and something I miss now). In the kitchen, on the window sill, I would prop up my phone and switch on to the next episode of the podcast.
When we met last, we were on the VIB overnight train from Luxor to Cairo. We had a private coupe and it was a comfortable journey.
Day 6
It was a special day. Nam’s birthday! Also, our last day of sightseeing in Egypt – we would leave next morning to Amman, Jordan (don’t forget to check out those blogs after this one).
We woke up early expecting to reach Cairo. But to our dismay, the train was running more than 2 hours late. I was annoyed – this meant that we would have to cut off something in our itinerary for the day. Our tour operator, Massimo from Cleopatra Tours, called and told us to get down at the Giza station. Franco, our interim guide, was waiting for us at the station. We picked up our actual guide, Mohamed Gamel, on the way to the pyramids.
After turning at a signal, we spotted the pyramids at a distance – they were huge even from here! We went on a round-about route that gave us views of the pyramids from different angles. The pyramids complex had very high security – we had to unload all our bags from the car (we hadn’t checked into our hotel yet) and put them into the scanner.
These were the oldest structures that we would see on our trip.
We reached Luxor, Egypt – our destination after the Nile cruise. It was evening and the orange setting sun covered the city with a very warm and welcoming vibe. It was a lot cleaner than Cairo and far less crowded.
Luxor, known in ancient Egypt as Waset and later Thebes, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It was the capital of Upper Egypt at a time when Egypt was split into two kingdoms. Today, it is called the largest open-air museum in the world as it is home to temples, tombs, monuments and giant statues.
We headed to the Luxor temple. The promenade near the temple, called the Luxor corniche, was beautifully landscaped and would make for a nice evening walk.
The city of Luxor – near the Luxor templeThe ancient path connecting Luxor temple with Karnak
We entered the temple and spotted an obelisk. Our guide, Karma, told us that there were originally two obelisks here – one of them was gifted to the French and could be seen at Place de la Concorde. Regular readers of this blog would have encountered these obelisks in many of our other trips – like the one inthe Vatican, Istanbul and Paris (blog coming soon).
The home of the obelisk which is in Paris today
The temple had statues of Ramses II, Tutankhamun and his wife. The temple was dedicated to the sun god, Amun. The statues of Ramses depicted different stages of his life – one was made for every 10 years that he ruled.
After a thrilling drive to Abu Simbel, we were now on our boat, all set to depart for the Nile river cruise. Our guide, Ahmed, was also joining us till the first stop, Kom Ombo. After lunch and a short rest (we had started our day at 3:30am), we climbed up to the sundeck to enjoy the breeze and the view. We could see some giant pillars in the distance – presumably of the temple we were visiting next.
The Nile is the longest river in the world. It runs 6650 kms long starting in Uganda (the White Nile) and emptying itself into the Mediterranean Sea. It is the reason for Egypt’s existence (the Gift of the Nile) and was home to one of the most advanced civilizations of the world at its time.
The Nile offers views of greenery and desert at the same time
Here’s a bit about the Nile cruise. There are many companies that operate these multi-day cruises on the Nile. Some go downstream the river from Aswan to Luxor and few even go onwards to Cairo. You can also find cruises in the opposite direction – it would depend on how you plan your itinerary. If you want to experience the Nile river’s glory and also not get bored by the long travel, we highly recommend that you pick the Aswan-Luxor stretch for your Nile river cruise.
We continue on our Egypt adventure (check out Part 1 – The Egypt Itinerary). It’s day 2 of the trip and we woke up in our hotel at Giza. Breakfast was included with our stay and we ate veggies, yogurt, sausages and croissants – I love breakfast buffets! Our cab driver was waiting outside to take us to the airport. We were flying out to the southern part of Egypt, to the city of Aswan.
At the Cairo domestic airport, a person met us who took our bags. He spoke to our guide as well – so we assumed they were part of the local team to guide us through check-in. He walked with us till the security check-in, turned back and asked us for money. It was a con! We told him to collect his dues from our guide as we didn’t have any cash. But he had our bags and we were forced to part with 50 EGP (roughly 120 INR at that time). Anyway, lesson learnt – do not accept help from anyone for bags!
It was a small airport with few check-in counters – we had to wait till our flight’s name appeared on the boards. We were travelling by Air Cairo and it was a 90 mins flight. On the way, the sight was desert everywhere. At one point, we could spot the Red Sea in the distance to our left.
The entire country is desert and the Nile
We passed over a giant lake, saw a highway that was as straight as a road could be – thanks to no obstacles in the landscape (we would be covering both later in this blog) and finally landed in Aswan.
I remember this moment very clearly. We were on a flight from Madrid to Abu Dhabi and luckily it was a day flight. I spent most of the time looking at the on-screen map and the landscape below – something I absolutely love to do. At one point, we were crossing over Egypt and I spotted the Nile river. It was quite a stunning sight – there was an endless desert except for a green portion that bordered the river. Indeed, the gift of the Nile!
Spotting the Nile river on the flight from Madrid to Abu Dhabi
That’s when the seed was planted – wouldn’t it be so awesome to visit the land of the pharaohs! Around 6 months after that moment, we found ourselves planning our trip to Egypt.
Egypt had fascinated me right from childhood. There were chapters in English and History about Howard Carter discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun, hieroglyphs and the ancient Egyptian monuments. It was truly amazing how these structures still stood tall after so many centuries – most of them very well preserved – including the human bodies! It is considered a cradle of civilization – a land that the most ancient humans inhabited before they spread across the rest of the world.
Contrast that against the Arab Spring and the volatile political landscape of the country. So, it’s quite tricky to confidently go ahead and pick Egypt as a holiday destination. Especially since we were traveling alone. But reading always helps. As usual, I pored over dozens of blogs and forum articles till I got the confidence to put together our itinerary.
Food is a huge part of the overall travel experience. Every place in the world has its signature dishes – food that is made better there than anywhere else. Whether it is the falafel of Amman or the kulcha of Amritsar or the vada pav of Mumbai or the croissant of Paris – once you’ve eaten them in their home ground, everywhere else seems inferior. Then there are foods that are adopted by different people who give their own twists to them. Today, we talk about one such food.
I woke up this Sunday with a craving. Sadly, we didn’t have the raw material to make it at home. And we couldn’t go out as other plans were already made. Basically, this blog is not a story of how I went about successfully fulfilling my craving. In fact, I take you through most of the versions I’ve encountered and how I loved (almost) all of them! This is one thing I could eat every meal of the day, most days of the week. Yes, I’m talking about the DOSA!
Dosa is a dish that instantly connects me to my childhood. My mother used to make the best dosas in the world – crispy but not lethal (yes, some dosas can be lethal – we’ll come to that), with the perfect amount of ghee and paired with some amazing versions of the versatile coconut chutney. No matter which restaurant we went to, nothing could beat this simple yet elegant version of the dosa. Over the years, my mother has changed her style of dosas but I’ve figured out how to replicate the OG version. Now, my favourite “nostalgic version” of dosa is the one that I make <humble brag>.
Welcome to Part 3 of our series, “Three Small Countries”. We continue our trip in Europe exploring the smallest countries in the world. We’ve already covered the smallest two countries – Vatican City and Monaco. We skip ahead a few spots on the list – number 3 and 4 are the Pacific Islands of Nauru and Tuvalu – hopefully, we will get to visit them in the future. This time, we explore the 6th smallest country in the world – Liechtenstein!
To continue the comparison trend of these countries to other popular places in India, let us pick the city of Mysuru (Mysore) in Karnataka. The beautiful city covers an area of roughly 160 square kilometres and can entirely swallow up the country we are visiting today – Liechtenstein. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you how to pronounce this!
Nestled in between Switzerland and Austria is the double-landlocked country of Liechtenstein (pronounced Lick-tahn-stine). The only other double-landlocked country in the world is Uzbekistan – hope you’ve already read those blogs!
Liechtenstein is a German-speaking country and is considered a “principality” headed by a Prince. The Holy Roman Emperor decreed this as a principality in the year 1719 and named it after the family that owned these lands – the Liechtensteins. After that, is a long and messy power struggle as Europe witnessed two World Wars and multiple changes of power. Liechtenstein was smart to take the route of its neighbour, Switzerland and adopt neutrality – a large reason why it is still an independent nation.
That much history is good enough to get us started. Let’s dive right into the travelogue:
Hello there! This is Part 2 of our series, “Three Small Countries”. In the first part, we visited the smallest country in the world, Vatican City. We continue our journey through Europe and move to the second country in our list.
This country has the highest population density in the world. The word “population density” always reminds me of Mumbai – especially Dharavi. Well, if we compare sizes, this entire country is even smaller than Dharavi and fits within 2.02 square kilometres. And it is in sharp contrast – being one of the richest countries (per capita) in the world. You may have guessed it, we’re talking about Monaco!
A bit of history to understand how this country came into existence. Monaco is entirely contained within France except for its Mediterranean coastline. It has been ruled by the House of Grimaldi since the 1200s. Given its location, both France and Italy had an interest in it – however, they mostly left it to be administered by the prince of Monaco – this makes it a principality (which it is to this date).
Size has never been a constraint for Monaco. It hosts the Monaco Grand Prix (Formula 1 racing) and is home to the Monte Carlo Masters 1000 (Tennis). It is also famous for the Monte Carlo casino, luxury cars, yachts and it provides a home to the rich and famous from around the world. One question that comes up – is Monaco the same as Monte Carlo? The answer is No. Monaco is the country, Monte Carlo is just one of the districts in the country.
The Monte Carlo casino
All you geography buffs would have noticed the flag of Monaco on the cover pic of the blog – it looks exactly the same as that of Indonesia right? Well, the main difference is the height to width ratio of the flag. Monaco’s flag is 4:5, while Indonesia’s is 2:3. Some people claim that the shade of red is slightly different – but tough for the average person to perceive it (I couldn’t tell the difference!).
Can you go to Monaco as a tourist? Yes! Getting to Monaco is quite easy. It is hardly 20 kms away from Nice, France. You can hop on a bus and get there easily. No additional visa requirements. You can also come in from Italy, which is also only around 20 kms away – but there is a higher chance that you’d be on the French side. The currency is the Euro itself. It is expensive to stay in Monaco and affording a hotel can be tough. So, it is advisable to stay in Nice and do a day trip.
And now, we go into the travelogue. After a really nice lunch of pizza and wine, we walked to the port where we took bus number 100. This would take us to Monaco.
