Shailaza's Blog

Tag: #wanderlust

  • The Wander Lust Story

    He is tall. He is dark. He is handsome. Your typical Mills and Boons brooding hero. Only that he isn’t looking for the happily ever after. In fact, he runs in the opposite direction if he meets someone loaded with the ‘happily ever after’. Meet Yuvraj Parasuraman who is a gypsy at heart. He looks at the world through the lens of his camera. He has been bitten hard by wanderlust and he isn’t complaining. He roams the world, clicking everything that he finds and he says he still has miles to go before he sleeps and I met him in Dharamsala, commonly known as His Holiness Dalai Lama’s abode.

    Yuvraj Parasuraman is a self-confessed travel addict. This photographer has roamed the world, seen places and yet he says  at 34 ‘his journey has  just begun’. I met Yuvraj for the first time in a charcoal drawing workshop in Dharamkot, a quiet suburb of Dharamsala. My daughter and I were sitting in the class of about 10 people when I noticed this tall, dark man working away on his drawing. There was something about him that caught my attention. Perhaps he was too focussed on creating the light in his drawing. When the instructor Rohit Kishan called for a break, he went out and stood gazing at the hilly forest of deodars. Though he was approachable and we were chit chatting in an instant, it took time for this introvert to open up. However, when he narrated his story, the conversation was as intriguing as the man himself.

    Creating light

    ‘Why would a photographer enrol in a charcoal sketching class?’ I asked him. ‘I wanted to learn more about light and charcoal sketching is the best way to understand light. The way you create an entire image with just charcoal and light is fascinating!’

    ‘When did you decide to become a photographer?’

    ‘I was 15 years old when I tuned into Fashion TV for the first time. My parents were busy elsewhere. I was watching the making of the Pirelli Calendar 2004 and had an eye on the door because I knew my mom could walk in anytime. I was mesmerized by not just the bevy of beautiful women in that frame but also the way they were playing with the light, colours and the movements. I think it was love at first sight! I was fascinated by the way photography could capture all of life’s interesting stories!’

    ‘So, when did the travel bug bite you?’

     ‘After studying visual communication in Madras Christian College, I started working in advertising where I would assist renowned photographers. Though the pay was good and the work was interesting, I felt restless because I wanted to travel.’

    ‘But aren’t there outdoor shoots in advertising?’

     ‘There are but those are few and far between. Besides you hardly get to see the places when you go for these shoots. You just focus on the shoots, stay in the hotel and then come back. That was not what I was looking for.’

    Travel Bug Bites

    ‘You say you love travelling. When did you first experience the magic of travel?’

    ‘When I was working in the field of advertising, I used to take these holidays and backpack to different places. The first place I went to was the Sun Festival in Goa. I was just eighteen years old at that time. One day in Goa, I was having my cup of tea on beach and watching the ocean. During that time, I realized that my life in the city is too boring and maybe I should do something else. I started going there every year and slowly Goa became my home.’

    ‘So, have you settled in Goa?’

     ‘No, I don’t settle anywhere. I keep travelling. Every year, I stay a month or two in Goa. I don’t really have a base anywhere.’ Not even his parent’s place in Chennai? ‘I visit Chennai off and on because my parents, brother and my friends live there. I don’t stay in Chennai for more than a month though my parents want me to stay in Chennai and take up a more settled kind of job. Since the last ten years, they have been trying to come up with a plan to get me married but I know for sure that it’s not happening. I keep telling them that I am not interested but when they really force me, I run away from Chennai too!’

    Run for life

    ‘So, do you not want to get married at all ever?’

    Yuvraj smiles. ‘No, it is not like that. I was contemplating the idea of marriage some years ago. I was in a relationship with a Chinese girl who was working on the same ship. Whenever, our ship used to dock in a country, we used to go out. Over a period of four months, I had developed a fondness for her and was even toying with the idea of marrying her and going to China. I got transferred to another ship but we used to keep meeting. Sometimes, we would go to lunch in Miami or just have a casual date. I used to call her from my ship. Once during the marriage planning phase, I happened to casually ask her if she would be okay if I was to go for a solo trip for a month once a year after marriage because I have to travel solo at least once a year. That is who I am! But she refused point blank. She told me that I couldn’t go on a solo trip because she would be with me all the time! That did it! I slowly distanced myself from her and perhaps she also understood!’

    Cruising the world

    For most of his professional life, Yuvraj has been working in cruise ships that travel all over the world and fuel his ‘banjarapan’. ‘I was an art dealer who used to work for a company called the Park West Gallery. This museum in Michigan was started by a former NASA scientist (mechanical engineer) Albert Scaglione in 1969. The idea was to collect works of all contemporary artists from across the world. He founded this company and started collecting art works from his friends. He collected all kinds of works of not just great artists but also the upcoming ones and masters. He started doing auctions on cruise ships for these works. Now, we have a museum in Michigan and three other galleries, in Hawaii, New York, Las Vegas.’

    Ship race

    ‘Interesting! From backpacking to cruise ships. How different is the experience?’

    ‘It is fantastic! I love roaming the world and I have a job where I wake up in a new city or country almost every day. Cruise life is completely different. It’s not like a backpacker’s life. It is more of a contract wherein you work in one or two or three cruise ships. Once I worked in three cruise ships in a period of just six months. My company can post me to any of their cruise lines. So, someday, I may be on a Carnival Cruise Line, the other day I would be on Royal Caribbean or any other such cruise lines. I have been all over the Caribbean but mostly I have spent just a few hours or a day in cities or countries. The ship docks in a city. We spend the day; we go out and have lunch or drinks and come back. We live on a cruise ship for about six to eight months. Once in Columbia, we went out with some guests and friends to have a good time since there weren’t any interesting restaurants near the place where we had docked. We found a place which was quite far off which was amazing. After some hours, I realized that we needed to get back to the ship else we may miss it!  Some of my friends were busy enjoying themselves and did not want to go. However, after a lot of cajoling and convincing (everyone was high on drinks), we got into a taxi. As luck would have it, the taxi driver did not speak English, he spoke Spanish. So, when we tried to tell him to speed up the car, he couldn’t understand. I used the Google translator to help him understand (I always use a google translator). We finally reached the port. On a ship, different protocols are followed for guests and crew members. While no one says anything to the guests, we (the crew members) were warned for being late.  The ship waits for no one, not even the guests. If the guests miss their ships and then they have to fly back to their home country.’

    To be continued

    All photographs by Yuvraj Parasuraman

    Copyright reserved

    This article by Shailaza Singh recently appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section

  • Traveler not a tourist…

    If you happen to meet Ellen McGregor Kortan (51)  (Ellen) and Theodore Kortan (59) (Theo) at the first glance, this couple would seem like ordinary American tourists. However, when you start talking to them, you realize that they are way different than the other jet-setting, destination hopping tourists who frequent Rajasthan. They call themselves ‘slow travellers’ and have been travelling the world on a budget (less than $200 per month) and been to more than 20 countries across four continents since 2015. They have visited Mexico, Belize, Guatemala in South America, Morocco in North Africa, Portugal, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece in Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines in South East Asia. Now they are on a tour of India and have visited Mumbai, Jaipur, Ajmer and are planning to visit Chennai, the whole of North East India and more.

    My rendezvous with these slow travelling retired journalists happened in Jaipur, Rajasthan. I met them at a bakery where they were eating rice crackers and drinking milk. They had just gotten off the train from Udaipur and were looking for their Airbnb. When I met them Theo was trying to ask the bakery owner a question which the latter could not understand. I helped by translating for him. On a closer look, Theo faintly resembles the well known actor Pierce Brosnan (his older version). He and Ellen have a perpetual twinkle in their eye which makes people approach them and even taken photographs with them. Theo says, ‘ I don’t know what is it with us that people love to take selfies with us’. He throws up his hands and says, ‘We are no celebrities!’

    This couple has been together for more than a decade. When Cupid struck, Theo was a videographer in Channel 5 in USA while Ellen worked there as a producer. When they talked about their dream of world travel, it didn’t take them long to realize that they were meant to be together. After marriage, they started planning their retirement and consciously decided not to have children. In Ellen’s words, ‘We call ourselves ‘Earth Vagabonds’ as we love wandering on this planet. We didn’t want to retire and relocate to one specific place. Instead, we chose to wander around and see the world. Theo retired at 52 and I retired at 43 in 2015.’

    So, where does the money to travel come from? Theo says, ‘From a very young age, my dream has been to travel the world. So, I have always lived frugally and well below my means. When Ellen and I started dating, I shared my dream with her and travelling the world on a budget became her dream too. We started saving very early (in America, you can ask your employer to save a percentage (in my case 19%) of your salary  and put it in a different account, which can then be withdrawn as a lumpsum). We also made a lot of wise investments. Plus, we also own a modest home in Cleveland, Ohio which we have rented out for a modest passive income of $700 (INR 57,400) per year.

    Ellen says, ‘Theo is a very shrewd shopper. Whether in America or foreign countries, he always hunts for the best deals and the lowest prices, which makes saving easy. We often hunt for discounts. We don’t buy a lot of clothes. We have a few pairs; we wear them out and then buy new ones. In America, I had just one car for most of my adult life as compared to other Americans who buy a new car every two or three years.  Moreover, we don’t spend a lot of money on five-star hotels or ordering food. Instead, we rent Airbnbs everywhere we go. We don’t use airplanes where we can opt for trains or buses or cars. We have our own kitchen where we cook our own food, shop at the local market and live like the locals. There are times when we have been over charged by the locals but then soon, we make friends with them and they charge us normally. For example, just the other day, I went shopping for coconut water. I found a shop some blocks away from my Airbnb. The first day, the guy charged me 80 INR. The next day when I went again and started talking to him, he took just 40 bucks for a coconut water. In fact, he even invited me to visit his own and I met his family!’

    Theo agrees. ‘The one thing that we have realized in slow travel is that people are almost the same everywhere. No one is really bothered about politics or religion or caste and creed. All they really want to do is live a good life and raise their children well.’

    So, what has been their travelling experience like? ‘Oh! It’s been an amazing experience,’ says Ellen. ‘We have walked the Sahara Desert, we swam with the whale sharks in La Paz in Mexico, we have hiked over night to see the active Fuego volcano in Guatemala. We also lived with the elephants for eight nights and eight days in Thom Pai’s Elephant Camp in Northern Thailand. We also jumped off waterfalls in Bali. But perhaps one of the most challenging experiences was in 2017 when we hiked overnight to see the active Fuego Volcano in Guatemala. This was some days before Theo’s 54th birthday and before the deadly eruption of June 2018 which nearly killed 200 people. Interestingly, Theo was the oldest male tourist and I was the oldest woman in that group (everyone in that group was in their 20s or 30s). But then one of our guides, Florencio was 55 years old which made us realize age is just a number. We hiked up the Acatenango Volcano (11,88 feet above the sea level) to see the Fuego Volcano eruptions. My legs burned, my knees throbbed and my hands were filthy, yet it was one of the best experiences. For Theo, the hike was like a walk in the park. His quads are in excellent shape, having played ice hockey for many years. I never took care of my physical fitness the way he did throughout life – until I got sober. Theo has always been extremely fit. For this hike, he carried up our two-person tent, sleeping bags and foam mats. Also, he carried the extra weight all the way down.

    We camped at Acatenango and thankfully it didn’t rain that evening but it was cold. We slept in our tents and we listened to the rain pelt the tent. At about 2 a.m., I saw lava spew from the volcano against the night sky. I couldn’t make it up to the summit. The steep trail was slippery from the rain the night before and my cheap sneakers weren’t exactly getting a good grip. Hiking boots would have been ideal – but we don’t usually hike so we didn’t carry hiking boots. I probably would have fallen as much with the proper shoes because my legs were so tired and sore. But one thing that I can say is that it is quite crazy to see an active volcano. At first, the volcanic eruption (which happened in the day) caught us quite off guard. It was an explosion of lava and almost like red vomit coming out of a mountain! I could never get used to the subsequent eruptions through out the night and next morning.’

    Would she do it again if given a chance? Ellen says, ‘This was quite an experience I won’t ever forget. Though I would love to repeat it, but I don’t think I could do it again.  At that moment, I loved it – pain and all. I’m not really a hiker. I’ve done Observation Point and Angel’s Landing at Zion Park in Utah, USA, along with the whole Bryce Canyon. I hiked up Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano. Those hikes were all like ‘walks in the park’ for me compared to this one. My legs were quite stiff after the hike but the views the entire way are incredible – not just Fuego and Aqua. The various forests, the volcanic scrub areas, the incredible feeling to have hiked up high enough to be above clouds.’

    Does she plan to hike again? ‘Yes, we are planning a low hike in the Himalayas but not as strenuous.’

    To be continued..

    This article by Shailaza Singh was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 25 November 2022