Let's Look at It Differently - My travel tales from around the world and my best ideas about life

My Chilean Host Mother Took Her Broken Heart and Said to Life Vamos (Let’s Go).

in life choices South America travel inspiration women on January 14, 2019 January 14, 2019

We were in September, and the sun had been hiding away for many days from Chiloé, a southern island of petite Chile, and rain thudded the brick-tiled roof unabashedly. As I shivered after a shower on a cold evening in Castro and to avoid getting scolded by my host mother when she would have seen my wet hair at dinner, I walked down to warm my head near the kitchen fire.

My host mother, who was already sitting at the round, wooden dining and sipping mate from her cup, called me to join her while patting the thick sofa cushion on her left. Perched on her right, the British volunteer, who was also teaching English with my program, rolled his eyes as he saw me accepting her invitation and approaching them. Respecting our usual friendly banter and rekindling the Indo-British feud, I threw some bad words in his direction.

Then as the three of us huddled at the dining and sipped tea in the cozy kitchen of our uninsulated home, my host mother told us that her brother had just come home to request some wine, and then she warned us not to trust him as he was an alcoholic.

Though I had seen her brother visit us every day, eat bread and cheese at the dining, drink wine, of which she kept a big bottle in her kitchen especially for him, I never realized that he was an alcoholic. Maybe I was focusing on cracking the heavy Spanish that darted to and fro between the siblings.

But his alcoholism was not the devastating part of the story.

Golden Highlights of 2018 – A Year of Writing, Love, and Nomadness.

in life life choices travel travel inspiration writing on January 7, 2019 January 14, 2019 with 6 Comments

The whistles of a black kite which is hovering above me in the light blue sky are the only sounds that break my attention now and then. In front of me, a green parrot just flew by; I see more of them in the morning, when one after another they go, searching for grains and guavas and water and, maybe, more parrots. The coffee cuckoo, similar to the one that used to visit me in the earlier place where I stayed, also showed herself to me by flying from one tree to another in the jungle of the army campus, in front of which this rooftop one bedroom house of my partner is located.

I have stationed myself in one corner of this terrace on a chatayi or as we say a mat nowadays, and from here I write my heart out. In this nomadic life, you can find me on and off in Bangalore, for I always come here to be with my partner, and thus I pen down many pieces from his vicinity with a temporary feeling of home.

Having spent more than four months now as a nomad, I have realized that you don’t have to own or rent an apartment to be at home. Neither are you always on the go even if you are a nomad. At the end of the day when I think about getting back to home, I imagine a quiet place, where the bathroom taps do not drip and where I cannot hear the screeching tires or intruding honks, but I can only tune into the crickets singing songs to each other. Where I can lay on a bed or in a sleeping bag in a tent, preferably tucked away in the midst of trees, with a warm cup of tea and a book to read. From where I can make a phone call to my parents and family for they worry if I disappear for even a day. I imagine a home that is a window into the world, or it has a window from where I can see the world, which I like to have at a distance. And that is all.

Such are my preferences these days. I started penning down this article to tell you about how my priorities shaped up the year 2018, and so on I go.

Basic Spanish Phrases You Need to Know Before Traveling to Latin America

in culture South America travel on December 22, 2018 January 14, 2019 with 2 Comments

Unlike the US, in India, we do not have Spanish or a foreign language course at our school, especially in the small town that I studied in. I grew up studying Hindi, English, and Sanskrit. I took a foreign language course in French during college, but a few classes and a French certificate was the farthest my foreign language aptitude extended to.

When I landed in Chile, I couldn’t speak any Spanish. I started living with a Chilean host mother who woke up with the motivation of teaching me Spanish so that we could communicate and thus began my struggle with the language that soon turned into eternal love.

Without trying to be melodramatic, I promise that if you learn Spanish while traveling in Latin America, you would also fall in love with this language; for Spanish is a passionate dialect and have phrases and words for almost every emotion. Some of the feelings that can be described eloquently in Spanish are strangled by the lack of words in the other languages that I know.

Malaysia eVisa for Indians – All You Need to Know.

in Southeast Asia travel visas on December 15, 2018 January 14, 2019

When I traveled to Southeast Asia this year, I knew that I would visit Indonesia, but I didn’t know where I would go from there. I zoomed out of the Asia map and turned the globe around to understand which countries were green and gave a visa on arrival or an e-visa.

The closest country to Indonesia was Malaysia, and its green footprint on the map captured my attention. Also, I am always excited to visit the less-popular places, and Malaysia is one of them. If you are planning to go to Malaysia now, you are lucky as you will see it before the country is flooded with tourists. I went to Malaysia in October, and sometimes I was the only one in a room in the entire hotel or the only one camping amongst 100 empty tents.

When I first traveled to Malaysia in 2012 for two days, my friends and I drove in and out of Malaysia-Singapore border five times due to some immigration problems. Back then I had applied for a Malaysia visa via an agent; in those days I was not so rigid about I-will-plan-all-my-travel-myself.

This year when I googled about Malaysia visa, I found out that Malaysia now gives an eVisa to Indians which is valid for three months, and you can travel within Malaysia for thirty days on that eVisa.

Happy as a girl who had just discovered ice cream, I applied for the eVisa for Malaysia within a few hours. The next day my visa was approved.

100 Days of My Nomadic Life – Highs and Lows of Living While Traveling

in life life choices travel travel inspiration on December 13, 2018 January 14, 2019 with 3 Comments

I haven’t gone out of my partner’s home, where I sit and write here in Bangalore, for three days, apart from a small walk that I did to the grocery store because I wanted to eat something better than lifeless noodles with invisible vegetables. Ironically, today I am writing about my 100 days of nomadic life.

I thought that being nomadic means staying on the road 24×7, and maybe, you feel that way, too. I will get to that, but first, let us go back in time a little bit to understand how my digital nomad journey started.

I chose this life for I wanted to be location independent. I wanted to be able to travel whenever I yearned to see a new place or live in a jungle where I could only hear the crickets whistle and the leaves rustle instead of the incessant blasting traffic of Bangalore or any other metropolitan. But having a rented apartment was sort of becoming a hindrance to free movement and adding up costs without adding any value, apart from providing me with a quiet writing space with a balcony.

I thought that I better spend the money which I paid for the apartment where people shut doors on each other as if they were enemies on gorgeous Airbnb’s or friendly homestays or rustic hotels in the hidden corners of the world. At least I would explore, meet interesting people and have some meaningful conversations, and live life at my own pace.

So I gave up my room in the Bangalore flat and packed my bags to wander freely while working online. The whole idea was to move slowly; I have never found any joy in visiting a place for a weekend or two days and then leaving it, while I didn’t even know what lay in my backyard though I saw all the famous attractions of that destination. And while exploring the world one place at a time, I could afford the lifestyle of a digital nomad because of my writing portfolio.

But I have come to realize that not having a permanent location is not about traveling all the time. It is about moving with a choice.

This nomadic life has put up all sorts of choices in front of me and let me be honest with how I feel about them.

Teach English in Chile – All You Need To Know About English Open Doors Volunteer Program

in South America travel on December 8, 2018 December 11, 2018 with 4 Comments

What does this Teach English in Chile guide contain?

When Spanish Hit Me – My Heartfelt Tale of Learning Spanish in South America

in culture emotional intelligence South America story travel travel inspiration on December 3, 2018 December 11, 2018 with 1 Comment

I went to Chile in July 2016 to teach English in a state school. All my friends, family, relatives, acquaintances, and social connections asked what made me go to Chile; I said I didn’t think much. They asked me if I could speak Spanish; I replied that I would learn Spanish in South America.

My family concluded that going to Chile was an immature escape as at the end I would be alone and financially unstable. I was sucked down into the whirlpool of emotional hurdles that my family stirred in my career and personal life while being assertive that they cared.

I was fired. I had just ended a two-year live-in relationship which I believed would turn into the long-lasting love of my life. The Titanic sank. I was going to be twenty-nine soon. Friends were getting married. Babies were being born. I did not know anyone in Chile. I did not speak Spanish.

Before I left, an uneasy feeling of forgetting something lingered. Like the one that makes you shuffle through your pockets every time you walk out of your home. I understood later that I was scared: of being alone, of unknowns, and of not knowing Spanish.

I did not know then that in a couple of months I would be able to speak the language fluently.

How to Score Chile Visa on an Indian Passport – From India and South America

in South America travel visas on December 1, 2018 January 9, 2019 with 3 Comments

Chile gives free ninety-day entry to most of the countries. But, of course, India doesn’t get free access, and we have to apply for a Chile visa. I was once stuck on the Chile-Bolivia border because I didn’t have any tourist visa for Chile as I had thought that India was also in the list of those fortunate countries. How wrong I was!

Having paid more than what I should have for this mistake, I decided I would be more sincere while doing visa research and would also help other travelers by updating them with my knowledge on the world visas.

So here you go.

My Essential Travel Guide to Chile – The World’s Most Gorgeous Country

in South America travel on November 29, 2018 December 11, 2018 with 14 Comments

What does this travel guide to Chile contain?

The Culture of Chile – 13 Chilean Conventions You Should Know Before You Visit Chile

in South America travel on November 21, 2018 January 14, 2019 with 3 Comments

While we strolled through the artistic arcades of the magnificent Angkor Wat temple, my Chilean friend Valentina, whom I had run into on a train from Bangkok to Siem Reap a month before my trip to Chile, asked me if I knew how Chileans greeted each other. I shook my head expressing my ignorance of the question and the culture of Chile.

I didn’t know anything about South America or Chile in that hot month of June, even though I was flying to Chile in July, if my visa went through, which I hadn’t applied for by then. Without noticing my obliviousness, Valentina went on telling me about Chilean greetings and other customs I should have known before going to her country.

While traveling in Chile, her insights helped me throughout my six-month-long solo adventure through the passionate land. Returning the kindness, I am aggregating all those unique conventions that left an impression on me so that you are prepared to visit this beautiful land of some even more beautiful people.