The Rebelle blog

It all began with a wedding. My friend was getting married in Kerala over a lavish 5-day ceremony last year in May. I had never been to Kerala and jumped the opportunity to attend the wedding. I bought a one-way ticket, to begin with. Little did I know that not only my stay at the wedding festivities make me fall in love with the places I was at but make me want to travel more. I met two friends of the groom who were from Poland and on their very first visit to Kerala. We decided to travel together on the train; I was going to Kochi, they were going to Allepey. We hit it off really well through the journey, talking about poetry and cities, movies, and music. Midway through the train travel when the Ticket Collector approached them, they decided to abandon their Allepey plan and join me in staying at Kochi and exploring the city. Thus, began the Kochi sojourn for three girls without a map, without an itinerary. We landed up at 3pm at Kochi and went for a stroll around 5. The evenin...

Suddenly after a regular, mundane week of carrying the same activities comes a day like today. I am super happy. I revived my National Geographic account on the internet and posted a few entries. They received such a tremendous response that this encouragement has made me look at everything in a new light. Suddenly, everything seems full of life and lively vigour and my spirits have undergone a positive change. I feel that the spark I felt was missing is here for me to reclaim and embrace again. I wish to share a photograph here that is very dear to me. I clicked this last year during a Christmas vacation on a hill- station with my family. All of us went for an evening walk to see the sunset and hill tops tend to surprise walkers. We were transfixed by the changing soft glow of sun and the incessant chirping of birds that seemed to magnify its sound over the quiet walkways. Somewhere between walking through the uphill roads, my father stopped and took out his cell phone to see th...