About The Author
Inder Raj Ahluwalia is an internationally renowned, multiple
award-winning travel/aviation journalist and author. Ahluwalia has been writing
on travel, tourism, hospitality, food, lifestyle and aviation for over forty
years for leading Indian and international newspapers and magazines, and covers
some 50 countries, including his home base, India. He has lectured at several
international forums, and spearheaded 'think tank' activities involving
tourism, heritage, environment and aviation. He has also interviewed hundreds
of eminent personalities. Under the brand-name Travel Darbar, Ahluwalia also
writes travel blog features, and gives travel talks. Ahluwalia's brilliant and
distinguished writing career has been crowned by several international and
national awards for travel writing. His impressive list of honours and awards
includes the prestigious 'Mark Twain Travel Journalism Award' by the Heidelberg
Convention and Visitors Bureau; the 'Medaille D' Or du Tourisme (Gold Medal of
Tourism) by the French Ministry of Tourism; a special 'Switzerland Tourism
Award'; and the Best Travel Writer In India' Trophy. He has also been
recognised for his exceptional travel writing by Singapore and Malaysia Tourism
Boards.
Introduction
Born to be Sikh!
It tells its own story. And quite a story it's turned out to
be. For me, being born a Sikh and living life as one has turned out to be an
immensely interesting, challenging and joyous experience, and one that has
shaped my psyche and personality to become what it is today. How good or bad,
relevant or insignificant it is, remains another matter that belongs to another
realm of thought. What matters is that it is my psyche and personality today,
and my being a Sikh has made them what they are. While mine has been a fairly
ordinary life in the general sense, and alas, I can't lay claim to having
achieved anything spectacular or even significant, it has been an
action-packed, eventful and exciting journey of sorts. When I compare it with
the journeys of those I know intimately, it comes across as starkly more
momentous, significantly more shaky and off-beat, but certainly more
interesting. In fact, interesting to the core! I remember vividly some of the
major twists and turns on my life's highway. It's a sobering thought but the
fact is that there have been more than there should have been. One thing that's
crystal-clear is the fact that I didn't take all the right Burnings on the said highway, and in
fact took several wrong ones. The result was that figuratively speaking I
couldn't land up at the right place at the right don't know exactly how much
back-tracking I did, but it was considerably and needlessly more than I should
have. I suppose in the ultimate analysis it doesn't matter that time. I What
matters is that I finally embarked on this particular journey of adventure and
discovery as a Sith travel journalist, rather than just a travel journalist.
much. From then on, armed with a certain sense of purpose, 1 felt things
changed a bit in terms of my behaviour. I am glad I did this and my only regret
is that I feel that perhaps could and should have done it earlier. My shift in
perspective enhanced the quality quotient of my life and travels. At the risk
of sounding fatalistic, I want to make the most of this journey while it lasts,
because it is giving me more fulfilment than anything else in my life. I feel
there is some meaning to things, and to things that happen, and to my life. I
feel I'm finally doing more justice to the time placed at my disposal. And I
feel a certain sense of joyousness and inner calm that I wasn't aware of in the
past. Over the years, sailing the vast oceans of life, I feel my thinking and
perception of life has changed a little bit. A sense of urgency has entered my
thought process. I wasn't exactly procrastinating earlier, but now feel there
are wheels beneath my feet when it comes to communicating my brand of thinking
and psyche to the world. Considerably more than I did in the past, I'm trying
to 'reach out' with a flurry of messages revolving around my international
travels as a Sikh. The communication channels that lay dormant and idle are now
wide open. I'm enjoying talking of myself as a Sikh more than ever, and sense
those around me are enjoying it too.
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