The Map

deepika
Feb 28, 2021
2 min read

Updated: Jun 11, 2022

As we sat around the dinner table during the summer of 2020, plotting on travel plans for the next holiday - it was more like dreaming of a time when this would become a reality, some time in the not so distant future - the kids asked what we used to do during our summer vacations growing up. And I promptly responded, "visit a new part of India each year of course", a tad condescendingly, as if there could be ANY other way to spend time in the summer!

And that's how this journey came about to be... the girls started asking about these regions of India, the different states, the variations in culture, festivals, and attire, the starkly different cuisines... you see, even though we make a trip back to India each year, we spend that precious time with the grandparents, leaving not much time to actually travel through the country. So the girls and I decided to take the virtual journey (My husband was a happy "partaker"... though I'm not sure this word made it to the Oxford dictionary). We drew up a plan to visit each state, one state at a time, over dinner on Sundays, and I finally got my act together and started documenting the journey. And so, here I am, with my journal entries from my Country to the Kitchen.