adventure | On My Canvas

Sitting on this makeshift work desk (that’s actually a couch) on the ground floor of a home in Chitragiri village in Wayanad is a blessing. Maybe the Christian family who owns the place might say that Christ has bestowed this blessing upon us. A big white church stands on the opposite side of the road. It is called Saint George Church Chitragiri, if I am not wrong. It’s large but narrow white facade bolts upright while the rest of the church sprawls behind. A tea plantation lies next door to the church.

a couch with laptop and pillows and covers, my makeshift work desk in a guesthouse in Wayanad village kerala — my makeshift work desk, Wayanad village, Kerala

In our house, this house, or I must say, this building, the owner’s family stays upstairs. I guess they have more guest rooms on the second floor. Behind our house, which has two rooms, a hall, a kitchen, two bathrooms, more common area, is the dormitory which is unoccupied at the moment. The coffee and betel nut estate of the family is behind the building. Our porch leads onto the cement driveway which fronts the green estate.

Here downstairs we are, in a quaint village in Wayanad, our doors open to the lushness of this coffee district.

We have spent three nights in this home. Today is our fourth day.

Please note: This narrative is fourth in the series of travel essays on my Sikkim to Himachal highway journey. Read the First: Leaving Sikkim for Himachal, Second: The 500-km Drive Through Bihar – Corn Harvests, Marriage Certificate at Hotels, and Truck Slogans, and Third Episode: Arriving in UP at Midnight – an Eerie Expressway, a Suspicious Hotel Attendant, and a Missing Wheel-Cover, too.

Also note: If I was a bit calmer – and perhaps had an ice cooler sticking to my head – I would have photographed it all. For now, we would have to do with this photo-less tour of Lucknow’s famous food. I have added a few photos from Google though.

The featured image is of a plate of tiki, taken at my parent’s home and purchased from a street food shop in their town. It’s a quintessential Uttar Pradesh photo, showing the tiki (though without chutneys) along with the Hindi Punjab Kesari, the everyman’s newspaper of my state.

My Home State Uttar Pradesh (UP) Has Moved On, But I Have Not: Indulging Nostalgia Through Lucknow’s Famous Food

We were going to pass Lucknow on our way to Himachal (from Sikkim). So for that afternoon, we had planned a Lucknow food tour: not a guide, but we ourselves were taking us to some of the most famous food in Lucknow. Neither had I been to the capital before nor did my partner S, and skipping the city’s quintessential delicacies to make it quickly to Himachal sounded like a lame excuse.

Driving Through Bihar: a Test of Our Unrelenting Spirit

Driving through the field-fringed Bihar highway – of which so much was under construction that we were mostly taking diversions – I sat with the car window open, feeling the wind on my face. Eighty’s English Rock played on the car stereo, and the promise of open hours on the road seemed as fertile as the green-yellow country extending to the horizon.

The Beginning of a 2000-km Road Journey

Please note: This narrative is the first in the series of travel essays on my Sikkim to Himachal highway journey.

After a night of bonfire in a Sikkim country homestay, in the morning, my partner Sagar and I lay in bed, our legs tired from the past three days of aimless hiking with the family’s two dogs. I had even gotten lost in the mountains once. We were deciding if we should do the three-hour trek we had thought of and, after it, drive Northeastward to Yuksom, a mountain town with multiple trails going around it.

My mind was relinquishing Sikkim (before the countryside, we had lived in Gangtok for almost three months) and hinting at going to Himachal Pradesh, where we traveled for four months last to last year and would be more familiar with the surroundings and could work and be happy. We even had a Himachal home from our previous visit on our minds: it had two rooms, homemade food, and enough seclusion on a hill; work quietly or saunter in the mountains when you like. And I needed a place to bunker down to finish a large travel writing project; everything else was secondary (Recommended Read: how to achieve your goals).