My crazy travels part 2
August 2014- May 2016
The first part was just the warm up. I started moving around like a squirrel from August 2014.
I went to India in july 2014 and then on to Almaty for the first time in August 2014. While I found that Almaty itself was cold and not that interesting , it was indeed centrally located relative to the Eastern Hemisphere. From Almaty, you can fly to India in four hours, Dubai in about five. Frankfurt in Europe was seven hours away, while Bangkok to the Southwest was about eight hours off. There are flights from Almaty to these and many other places.
The semester system gave us several long breaks
October – Fall break – seven/ nine days
December/January – Winter break – about ten days
March – Spring break – seven//nine days
Mid-May through mid-august – sweet summer break !
In USA , seven day vacations were no good for international travel, but here they were!!
And now my finances were in order, I had money to travel.
For two years, I took three vacations every year and a very long vacation every summer.
October 2014 – Went to Kolkata, then Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Visited Kep by the seaside.
December 2014- January 2015 – Went to Bangalore in India, then to kolkata and Taki in West Bengal, and on to Mumbai .
March 2015 – Went to Oman to visit my nephew Rajarshi
Summer 2015 – Went to Istanbul in June, then to Lawrence, Kansas – my hometown for thirty-five years. Then went to Asheville, North Carolina to visit my friends,then on to Scranton, Pennsylvania to visit some other friends, then to Montreal for a couple of days before I took off to visit my friend Swapan Dasgupta in Dalhousie, Nova Scotia. And then back to India after a few days in Amsterdam. That was a joyous two months of carefree travel with money in my pocket for the first time in my life.
October 2015 – Kuala Lumpur and Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and of course, Kolkata.
December 2015-January 2016 – Later in the month, went to Kolkata, and then to Digha – a popular seaside town in Bengal.
On the way back, went to Kuching, Borneo to see Orangutans!! Unfortunately the wild ones were hard to find, could only see the ones in a sanctuary!. Enjoyed the town of Kuching off the beaten track!
March 2016 – Went to Kolkata only , my mom was ill, I decided to stay with her for a full week.
May 2016 – got a few days off after classes ended and final exams began. I took off to visit Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan and spent three days with my student from Kansas, Dr. Zaier Aouani and his friend Aksar. Astana is an architectural marvel, in the middle of nowhere, reminds one very much of Dubai, except it gets down to minus 40 c every winter. In early May, it was cold, about five degrees and windy, not much fun to walk around outside.
