It was an itch all right. One that I tried curing in vain. Ten weeks after I had returned from an epic month spent in Vietnam, I was once again at the airport with my passport heading off to Hong Kong. When my flight took off, I looked at my ticket in wonder. I was actually doing this!
The best travels beckon you to explore. Most people and a few philosophers emphasise on the importance of coming back home after undertaking a long trip. But I had no such joy when I returned home. I was relieved and satisfied yes, but not ecstatic at returning. I knew my job and family awaited me and I would settle into my routine once again. And it was a great talking point for a few days with a few people to share some of the stories. You realise that even your best friends are not keen in understanding your motivation or learnings from the trip. They will indulge your stories and make all the right noises but speaking to a traveller about a place and talking about it to your friends and family are two completely different things.
I would spend hours looking at the photos from my trip. I selected almost half of them and put them up on my personal Facebook account. So enamoured was I and so fully I had absorbed these places that I ended up writing a caption for every single of the 750 odd pictures. I opened accounts with Lonely Planet and Couchsurfing. I obsessed over different places in the world and began making plans to head off again. None of these plans were really concrete until one day I thought it was possible to go someplace. Practicality kicked in soon and one look at my finances told me that this would be a difficult. The rupee had started crashing and things weren’t great on that front.
Other essentials like duration of trip and proximity to Bombay were other factors that had to be worked on. This pre-trip planning so enthused me that looking at places imbibed me with a determination of making it possible. After a few nights, I had decided between Hong Kong and Mauritius. Another round of Internet searches and reading links later, I decided it would be Hong Kong.
A perfect itinerary (If that exists), enough money, leave from work and timely flights – all of which can reduce the most well planned trip to dust – suddenly worked themselves out. It was time to say hello to Hong Kong.
