All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By NITIN GAIROLA
After setting the scene by providing my world travel background and also giving a brief history oftravel itself (for humankind), I thought it was appropriate to start the account of my first proper international trip with this quote of Lao Tzu: ‘’A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’’
Barring Bhutan, where I had lived for 3 years as a child, the England and Scotland visit was my first and defining international trip in 2007 and my ‘single step’ was to literally walk into the Kuwait Airways booking office in central Delhi and bag my return ticket from Delhi to London. Of course, these were the days just before the world had started booking air tickets online. I had got a bit of a deal at Rs 27,000 for the return flights when most other airlines at that time were charging around Rs 35-40k. I didn’t care that the airline wasn’t that well reputed back then as long as I got my ticket to fly and this was my first hint that I would be willing to travel by any means necessary, as long as I got to do so.
As I had mentioned in my first piece, my elder brother, Amit Gairola, had moved to London a year earlier for work and it gave me the perfect reason to start seeing a bit of the world at the ripe old age of 27. It was a good 3-week holiday in the June of 2007 and we had planned to see a lot of London city, Greenwich, a few rock music concerts and a trip to the Scottish Highlands, their cities, quaint towns, castles and naturally lots of distilleries.
To start with,I was just amazed at the experience of taking an international flight and to realise that in a matter of hours one could be in a land that for years didn’t have such an easy access and because of that had developed its own culture, practices, language, currency and had a very different environment and landscape as well. In5 hours we had landed in Kuwait City and after a stopover of around 3-4 hours, the flight was on its way to London on the next 7-hour leg of the journey. I was also introduced to border control which is another way of saying ‘passport checking’.
were too polite to say no
My brother had picked me up from the airport, and in the next week or so before leaving for Scotland, I was all over London City. In my 27 years of existence, I had never seen anything like it – the stunning parks and gardens, museums, architecture and just the whole vibe of the city which was both ultra-modern and steeped in tradition at the same time. In that sense, it’s truly a unique and marvelous city. To add to it, Amit had booked tickets for some great rock music artistes and bands such as Ryan (not Bryan) Adams, Megadeth (heavy metal) and Pearl Jam (alternate grunge rock), who performed at the sold-out Wembley Stadium.
After getting a surface level understanding of London, we were on a 6-7 hour train ride to Edinburgh, which is the dark, brooding capital of Scotland. With its black gothic castles & spires, that too on a cold misty day, I was in love with the town already. To top it all, it had these ghostly walking tours past midnight, which were perfect for the setting. From Edinburgh, we had rented a car for the week and were to drive on the Scottish Highlands and stop in various towns, with our last town being Inverness and its now legendary lake called Loch Ness (recall the story of the mythical Loch Ness monster?). On the way,you can’t avoid the ubiquitous castles and distilleries of Scotland. We made our mandatory halts and consumed things that were both shaken and stirred (but never while we drove, it must be pointed out). Amit was particularly excited about Glenlivet while I about Johnny Walker (as it represented the restless spirit of discovery to me).
Ness
In a strange funny incident, Amit and I were caught by a few ‘birders’ (the ones who love to spot birds) who wanted us to join them.
So, we were graciously taken to the ‘hideouts’ from where we could use their telescopes and binoculars and make notes of the birds we spotted. Initially, we were too polite to say no to these gentle souls but after half an hour we devised an escape plan and ran away from the birders and had the greatest laugh over a couple of scotches in a dingy old pubof a lovely little town. It is ironic that, years later, I do like bird watching myself (of the winged kind).
This trip was to be the catalyst for my independent way of travelling in the years to come. Had my brother not relocated to London, would I have taken my ‘first step’? Well, definitely not in 2007 but perhaps a few years later and perhaps not in this independent mode without taking the support of a group tour. My journey of a thousand miles and multiple world travel records had indeed begun in 2007…
(Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home.)
