Amit Sinha's Travelog

I have just three days to go before I end this phase of travel. On Wednesday I leave Bangkok for Chennai, and will spend the next five or six weeks working for a microcredit organization, following some of the work they’ve done.

Travel is great, and I’ve enjoyed the last five months or so immensly. Its hard to find a better way to know yourself, and the world, really. However, I did realize that there will be more opportunities for me to travel, and I’d rather use the time remaining to do something that I would otherwise not be able to do. And that’s the experience I hope to get in the next month or so, in India.

Unfortunately, that does leave Africa and South America out of my ‘six continents in six months’ scheme, but I have a good idea of what I want to do there, and over the next couple of years, I’ll use my vacation time to experience them.

I head to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for a couple of days, and then have a few days in Chennai, which I shall use to update my blog, photos and suchlike.

I hate to sound all philosophical, but life truly is a journey, and being on the road, seeing new places, meeting different people, and adjusting to different ways of life, is just an incredible and enjoyable learning experience. It also refreshes you in many ways, and helps clear things a little, as while discovering the world out there, you find out more about yourself.

Just finished a dosa and chicken curry at a tamilian restaurant in Vientiane, run by a guy from Karaikal. He’s been here for about thirty odd years! Also met a couple of tamils from Malaysia and south TN. Apparently, according to the restaurant owner, Vientiane falls on an immigration route- Folks from TN/Sri Lanka make their way to Malaysia/Thailand, and then by road come to lao, enter China through Lao’s northern border, then on to Mongolia, and into Russia, from where they head into Germany or other western nations, with the ideal being London. Apparently four people did this last year, and two made it to London, but he’s not heard from two others… there’s such a fascinating ‘other world’ out there that we don’t think about!

Was good to know that my broken Tamil could actually be understood in laos!