When I was in university, I went through a phase that lasted about half a decade where I was extremely cynical of strangers wanting to know who I was or about my life. This was in the late 2000s; I had finally acquired a Facebook account and learned that anyone could Google me and acquire…
Category: Travel Stories
Congratulations, You’re a Mother! Wait, What?
When I was sixteen going on seventeen, my family made one long, extensive trip to see many of our family and friends in Japan and the US. Because my parents had work and therefore less flexible schedules, they returned home to India first. But my sisters and I wanted more time on the trip, and…
My Move to India, or How I Got Conned
In Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, there’s a paragraph where the main character remembers on the stupid decisions made by herself and her friend at the age of fifteen. She reflects that people should be locked up for a year at that age in a paragraph that seemed puzzling as a teenager, and…
Reluctant Unaccompanied Minor, Forgotten
My mother has frequently joked that I’ve looked 32 since I was 12. (When I turned 24, I joked that by my mother’s own logic I was now 64 and the oldest member of our family. One of my sisters objected that I was misunderstanding: I stagnated at 32 at the age of 12, she…
The Living Murphy’s Law of Transportation: Introduction
For about a decade from my early teens into my early twenties, I was the living embodiment of Murphy’s law when it came to transportation. Though I traveled a great deal in those years, I rarely had any trips that simply went as planned. It came to a point where my sisters would flat out…
The Quirky Hostel Manager (Pt. 3)
On the last day of the conference, a few fellow conference goers asked me about where I was staying. We were talking over lunch at an affordable Chinese place not too far from the fancy hotel that served as the conference venue. “It’s a hostel that’s filthy and smells like pot,” I responded. “And it’s…
The Quirky Hostel Manager (Pt. 2)
On day 2 of the conference, I walked up the hill through the rain to attend the 6am coffee session. After that, still pretty damp, I attended panel after panel. I’d forgotten my phone in the hostel, so after lunch (just as I was starting to feel dry) I rushed back to the hostel to…
The Quirky Hostel Manager (Pt. 1)
I dragged my larger-than-necessary suitcase from Powell Station to the hostel on 6th. I’d just flown in from Tokyo for the San Francisco Writer’s Conference that started the next day. I was exhausted and my phone was not making my day any easier: the battery would lose charge like sand through a sieve, and it…