23 ½ Beds

By Dr. Ameya Ghanekar

28 years old orthodox Indian professor Dr. Omkar Kulkarni is living a very mediocre life for years. An intense telepathic conversation with his student (Unknown to him) changes his approach towards life drastically. He starts believing his ‘Heart’ more than his ‘Mind’. He decides to ‘Trust the Unknown’ and starts his ‘Euphoric Travel Escapade’ in South East Asia with absolute ‘No Plan’.

He starts trusting that – Everything happens twice, once in mind and once in reality. After overcoming many odds and obstacles on different fronts he starts his journey to explore himself on 10th October 2010 (10.10.10).

This book outlines his uniquely amazing and amazingly unique experiences of staying with ‘23 Unknown Angels’ from 6 countries in 83 days. He gets a chance to live with ex-Buddhist Monk, Transgender, Traditional Muslim Family, Orphanage owner, Russian Scuba Diver, Minimalist, Breast Cancer Patient, Vegetable Seller, Blind Violinist, Young German Volunteer etc.

Most of us believe that ‘Magic’ isn’t real. If you want to Experience ‘Magic’ of ‘Trusting the Unknown’ – This Book is a Must Read for YOU.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543703498

Dr. Ameya Ghanekar

Author’s Profile Dr. Ameya Ghanekar is Tedx Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Published Author, Strength Coach, Learning Strategist, Belief System Enhancer, Award Winning Leadership Facilitator and a Globe Trotter.

Book preview

The Beginning of a Euphoric

Travel Escapade

‘I wanted to be a free bird to cherish each

moment without any defined horizons.’

The Heart Calling

‘The lens we use to look at life actually changes the look,

feel, touch, texture and the entire experience called Life.

The lens I was using was a very simple one—Heart.’

W hen you cease to dream, you cease to live. I was so glad that I was used to dream religiously. I knew all our dreams can come true if we just have the courage to pursue them. Really nothing happens unless first you dream, and I strongly believed that sleep is the best way of ‘dreamy meditation’. I did not like being disturbed during those eight hours of deep meditation and dreaming ever. Keeping this in mind, I had gone off to sleep that night and the phone rang, Tring , Tring … Tring , Tring … I was in between an intense discussion with Maria about her life-changing experience and her journey of discovering herself. Before even I could take Maria’s permission to leave, once again the phone rang. Tring , Tring … and … and … I had to come back to reality within a few seconds just to answer the phone. I had to travel to quite a few cities and countries before I came to Pune, India, back to my bed. I was annoyed as it was 2:30 a.m. But keeping in mind that I was a professor and next day was my subject examination, the conversation was opened by me. ‘Good morning, Dr Omkar Kulkarni here, how may I assist you?’ Being a sales and marketing professor, I had to be professional for that moment; however, I was annoyed because my sleep was disturbed. Sometimes what worries me the most is being professional twenty-four hours a day. Being a professor at undergraduate level, I had to be there for my students always, as they needed the guidance and support the most at this age. My mind was telling me that one of my students must have called me to get his or her queries solved regarding some sales and marketing topic. I know now you must be wondering why any of my students would call me at 2:30 a.m. Here is the answer for that. When I was a student, I had lots of questions a night prior to the examination and my professors were never available for me at that time, so today, me being a professor, I had decided this new technique of giving my personal mobile number to all my students. They were informed that if they had any queries, they could call me any time of the day or night prior to the examination. This technique was proving to be successful as most of the students were very happy as well as comfortable with the fact that their professor was there for them to answer their queries just before the examination as well. This was one of the reasons my previous batch students were able to achieve excellent grades in the final examinations.

I heard someone saying, ‘Sir, I am sorry but I have a request, can I speak to you for a moment please.’ I was surprised as it was a familiar voice, but I couldn’t recognise who he was exactly. There was pain, sorrow, and sadness in the voice, I was a little confused. I was trying to walk down the memory lanes and check if I could recognise the voice, but I was not able to. I again heard the voice and this time I could literally hear the cry and I was wide awake by now and the conversation I had after that changed my life completely and drastically. It changed my thought process as well as conditioning of my mind. I really was a different person with a completely different perspective and thought process at the end of the conversation.

I had to ask so many questions to myself, am I that fortunate that I have this amazing and beautiful life, or is everyone else having a great misfortune? I was asking myself, why did I even crib once in my life? Do I deserve to be so fortunate? When will I start the real life? Why don’t I cherish each moment? Why do I even think of my long-term plans and lose control over the present moment? Am I faking it now? What is the main motto of my life? Why do I waste even few minutes in a day thinking about evil? Why do I hate some people? Do I have the right to even do that? Why is that I have a caring family, lovely friends, and all happiness around and I have never sensed it before? Why do I envy anyone else when I have so much with me always? Introspection had to be done by me because of someone else, why? Why did I need my student to show me the mirror reflection of my own life and happiness? Just because I have it all, am I taking everything for granted? Or is it because I always want it more than what I have? Maybe because by nature I am not content? Am I never happy? Why am I getting closer to what I should have ideally than what I really wanted to have? Someone once said that God never discriminates, is that really true? Is everyone really as fortunate as others? I had all these questions and no answers, rather I was a question bank and there was absolutely no answer key with anyone for this question bank. I knew that a man is always judged by his questions and not by answers. If somebody had to judge me today, I was very rich, full of questions, but no answers for any of them.

That soft, unsure, shaky voice said, ‘Sir, I want to confess something to you and I hope you don’t mind.’ At the back of my mind, I thought usually confession is supposed to be a new handshake, but for this instance, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a pleasant handshake.

I could sense that he was one of my ex-students, but I was still not able to gauge who he was exactly. He said, ‘Sir …’ and I interrupted, ‘Excuse me, dear, I apologise, but may I know how do we associate with each other?’ After asking that question, I was a little ashamed as I could have just asked which batch? Which year? And it would have been easier as I already knew he was one of my ex-students. It’s just that sometimes being spontaneous is easy, but at this moment, it was the most difficult thing to do for me because the pain in the voice was unspoken still loudly heard by me and I wasn’t sure where this conversation was heading.

He said, ‘Sir, I am sorry, I am not only sorry to you but also to my parents and my friends.’ He had still not disclosed his name and I could feel he was in tears and he was really disturbed. He wanted to speak to me and wanted my support. By now, it did not matter to me who was he but now my bigger worry was how is he? Is he okay? And how best could I help him?

He said, ‘Sir, I still remember your stories in the class about how beautiful life is and how precious each person, each relationship, and each moment is. Today, I truly agree with you, sir, however, it may have been too late for me.’ Listening to what he had just spoken, I was shocked and I was not sure if he meant the same what was going on in my mind. In fact, I wanted my thoughts not to come true. Keeping my thoughts on the back burner, I asked him, ‘Are you okay, son? Are you alone? Where are you now? How best could I help you? Would you like to meet me in person?’ He smiled and I could feel that over the phone, and he said, ‘No, sir, I am okay, and I am doing well. Please don’t worry about me.’ I could feel the pain in his smile too. How sad he must have been, his smile was indicating that he was in pain and he was unhappy. He had a backdrop of sorrow to this conversation, and till now I did not know why he was so upset as well as who he was. ‘Why’ was completely unknown to me and ‘who’ was partially known to me. But right now at this moment, what was most important to me was how best I could help him. It was a strange feeling—the feeling of helplessness.

I was trying my best to recollect who he could be, but my memory was playing hide-and-seek with me. Sometimes we just need to accept that we remember what we want to remember, when we do not want to remember for sure, and vice versa. It wasn’t just keeping me curious, but I was getting worried and traumatic due to uncertain circumstances. Although I knew that the only thing that makes life possible is permanent intolerable uncertainty, not knowing what is coming next, uncertainty was one of the feelings that I couldn’t manage well. I asked him again how he was doing, where he was, which organisation he was working for. These were few leading questions that I thought could lead me to who he was. Why was he talking like this? And what could he be possibly sorry for? Based on his replies, I could have decided how best I could assist him or who else could I talk to so that he could be helped. I knew that being good was commendable, but only when it is combined with doing good. Unless and until I knew what he was looking for, I really did not know how to offer him the helping hand. I could hear loudly through his unsaid words that he was in pain, he was sad, he was not happy at all, and he wanted some kind of help or support from me.

And within a few moments, he broke the silence with a very husky and shaky voice. He said those ‘eleven words’, and those eleven words shattered my concrete rock-hard ‘heart’ and I realised that human life is just a story told by God. He said, ‘Sir, …’

I couldn’t go and meet him; I couldn’t be of any help to him. It was the moment of helplessness and my words were frozen. In the recent past, I had never felt so helpless ever. The least I could do was to pray for him, so I prayed for him for some time and requested God to be kind to him. I wanted to talk to God. Prayer was the only medium; I could talk to God, communicate with God, and request him not to …

I did not even know his name. I tried calling him back on that number, but his number was switched off. I was there with me at the same time I was with him. Again and again I kept on trying to reach him on that number, but I was not successful. Helplessness was the only emotion on me at that moment.

It was the night of real deep introspection for me as I was talking to myself after long with the sole motive to understand, analyse, and synthesize my own journey in life. I felt like a small packet wrapped within me very tightly. I was trying to find myself by looking within me and I was getting closer to me every moment. I was trying to read myself with silent notes. I knew that knowing oneself is the beginning of all wisdom and I wanted to be wise. I was realising again and again that life is a wonderful journey; one has to give his best to make it the best for himself and for others.

Unknowingly a random thought crossed my mind and I asked myself, if I had three months left in my life, what would I do? I asked this question to myself and realised life is too short. This question itself was very much ‘unknown’ to me. I had never thought about this question before. My mind reminded me, to live the same day twice wonderfully is impossible. Within a few moments, my heart prompted me the answer for my question. If I had three months left in my life, I would travel, meet people, learn different cultures, explore the world, walk around, bicycle down the world, cherish diversity, appreciate differences, bridge the gaps, learn as many people as I can, create relationship equations, share whatever I have, express care for nature, people, society, strangers, places, things, animals, just towards everything. Trust everyone and everything including strangers, share each meal, stop analysing and start believing that everyone and everything is just superb, positive, and unique. Just give my best being ‘human’. Stop taking and enjoy giving. Giving because I wanted to give and not because I expected something to come back, no transactions, just just pure sheer care and giving.

I wanted to live an unplanned life, the offbeat life. My heart loved the concept of free life, life with no rules, life without any planning, life of spontaneity, life of just living for the moment, and life of possibilities, but the surroundings had conditioned me to be conventional and very planned all the time. I had to do everything absolutely right all the time and I wanted to break those bonds of being so well planned.

I wanted to conquer the world not with the motto of being an achiever but with the motto of being a giver. I thought it was a unique way of life, but due to the limitations and conditioning, I was never allowed to follow what I wanted to, rather I had never allowed myself to be what I really wanted to be. I wanted to be a free bird to cherish each moment without any defined horizons. This is the way I would have lived if I had just three months left in my life. Was it possible? If yes, then this journey from me to me to me was going to be beautifully admiring and admiringly beautiful. I would get to really know who I am. I would be a step close to myself to start with. The next step would have been to accept myself as I am and later appreciate who I am to the fullest. The thirst to know more about the ‘unknown’ was inviting me and I had accepted this invitation gracefully. The known me was very interested to know, learn, and appreciate more about the ‘unknown’ me. The ‘unknown’ factor within me was the one who was waiting to be explored. This was the moment of truth for me.

Within a fraction of a second, a decision was made that I had to travel and explore the world of possibilities, rather explore myself. I had to give a chance to the ‘unknown’ me that was within me, to be active, and I was all ready to experience the ‘unknown’ me. As soon as my thoughts were getting concrete, suddenly I realised that the human mind functions in such an amazing way paradoxically. First thing came into my mind after taking that decision was, what about my job? I had the first well-paying job in the last eight years of my career. I had just started earning well and had absolutely no savings till now; this was the time for saving. Hmmm … that led to another thought: how will I finance my trip even if I leave the job? And that led to another thought: when I come back from travel, will I be able to fetch a good job? Or even a job as good as what I have now? I was all thoughts and swiftly my heart prompted me, ‘Let’s consider, Omkar, you just have three months in life, the last three months left with you to live, will you ever ask these questions to yourself?’ Generally, ‘mind’ and ‘heart’ had a conflict within me; however, this time the practical mind supported the heart’s thoughts by saying, ‘Omkar, if you could get a great job now, why wouldn’t you get it again?’ Smile, rather a big hundred-yard smile was the outcome of the union between ‘heart’ and ‘mind’.

Mind speaks—I had heard this, but to experience mind speaks what one wants was a rare occasion for me. At this moment, my practical mind was cooperating with my sweet ‘heart’.

I had recently read that once Jesus Christ had said, God is love. Love comes through the unknown, with the unknown, as part of the unknown. To move into the unknown, one needs courage, tremendous courage. To cling to the known, there is no need to have any courage: any coward can do it, cowards only do that. Certainly I didn’t want to be a coward, so I endorsed the decision once again that, yes, I was going to explore myself for the next three months through travelling. This journey from ‘known’ to ‘unknown’ had begun with me as well as within me. I was all set to prove that I didn’t want to go where the path was leading, instead I wanted to go where there was no path and leave a trail.

My heart was happy and my mind was trying to gradually accept the decision. Where could I travel? I loved my thought process as the question was not how and when but where. As first two questions were eliminated by the fact that I had to travel as I was considering, these were my last three months of my life. If not now, then when? If not me, then who? It became so simple. And suddenly I remembered the conversation I had with Christina, last year at Lausanne, Switzerland, which was probably going to be of great help to me in the near future. Hello, Christina.

Last year I had gone to Lausanne for twenty-one days to attend a ‘management development program’ at the world’s first hospitality management school. Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva. It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura Mountains to its north-west. Lausanne is located sixty-two kilometres north-east of Geneva. It was one of the most beautiful and panoramic cities I had ever visited. Each and every place at Lausanne was like a scenic painting designed by the artist called God. Nature has blessed this region with everything one could dream of. Situated by Lake Geneva, the biggest lake in Western Europe and surrounded by vineyards, countryside, and forests, Lausanne benefits from an enchanting backdrop with spectacular views of the Alps. It makes an ideal point of departure for excursions lasting several hours or longer. The city as a whole was just simply spectacular.

I had managed to get a budget hotel accommodation close to the school for twenty-one days. At the end of the stay when I saw my accommodation bill, I was shocked. I was paying a huge amount of money for my stay. Just for twenty-one days, the amount of money I was paying as rent was huge. It was as good as my five months’ salary back home in India. I was praying for help and I said, ‘God, please help me’, and my mind was telling me—no one can help you, probably not even God, as far as this problem was concerned.

Another thought that was bothering me, although I was in Switzerland for twenty-one days, gosh, I didn’t know any Swiss people at all. I did not even have a single local experience with Swiss people. I had not even visited a single typical Swiss house. I didn’t know anything about Swiss culture and traditions. Staying at the hotel, I couldn’t actually have a taste of real local Swiss experience. The million-dollar question was, rather the million-euro question was, how could I jump into someone’s house and say, ‘Hello, I want to learn the Swiss culture from you, can we talk?’ Or how about reaching someone’s house with luggage and saying, ‘Hello, I am a stranger and I want to stay with you for a few days as I want to learn about the way you live—may I?’ Especially, when I have hospitality management background, it sounds like a paradox. How about asking someone for their house keys and giving them justification as, just in case I come late to the house, I could open the door and get in their house? Best would be asking the host to sleep on the floor and occupying their bed for maybe ten nights. How about asking the entire family to cook and eat vegetarian meal for three consecutive days just because I am a vegetarian—sounds like a plan, right? And yes, did I mention the plan was also not to pay a single penny except maybe a lot of cultural diversity talks in return, that’s it.

If you think that’s my dream, yes, you are partially right. It was my dream and my German friend Christina enlightened me with a concept that could make my dream come true. She gave me the magical password to the world of possibilities, sharing, caring, and loving—Couchsurfing.

She explained to me the new concept at travelling—Couchsurfing. She said Couchsurfing is not just a website but it’s a way of life. She emphasised that one of the best things about Couchsurfing is to connect, meet, relate, and grow relationships with locals and the sole motto of Couchsurfing is to share, care, and connect with people.

I was surprised to hear this and somehow did not believe in the concept initially as I thought ‘no one’ would allow a stranger to stay at their place without any financial transaction or benefits. It sounded as good as the whole world is the best place to live and there is no evil as we are in the ideal world. Christina realised that I didn’t believe what she was telling me and that’s why she shared a lot of personal experiences with me about Couchsurfing. She shared about her experiences from different parts of the world with me. She also shared how everyone had helped her because she was a Couchsurfer. She said several times that Couchsurfing was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She not only loved the concept but believed in it totally. Initially it was very difficult for me to even believe a little in it. However, knowing how honest Christina as a person was, I had some percentage of belief after talking to her about the concept for an hour. I thought of exploring it some time. It sounded strange, interesting, at the same time too good to believe at that time. I had almost forgotten about this, but this new brainwave of travelling for the next three months made me check, does this concept really exist?

I decided to go online and check whether this concept really existed. And if yes, then, how does it work, rather does it even work? Being apprehensive, analytical, and conservative, I had to think of all that for sure before actually searching it online. Let’s consider if someone is too nice to us, we doubt the intensions. Sometimes instead of asking why, ‘why not’ is a better question for many answers. Rather questions melt down just by a thought that why cannot someone be genuinely nice, hospitable, caring, and sweet to us without any hidden intensions? Why can’t we just believe someone who is way too nice to us without any reasons? If someone is bad, we might think that’s normal as most of the people behave badly at times, then why can’t we believe in the same way that some people could be genuinely too nice to us too? Is it difficult to trust good? Or is it easy to trust evil? That’s something that was playing on my mind throughout. I feel there are just three types of battles in life: man to man, man to himself, man to the world. And here I was trying to win over all three of them at the same time.

Before much to do, I went online, checked the website, as mentioned by Christina, it was completely free to join the site and I found lots of people, rather thousands of people who were strong believers of this phenomena called Couchsurfing. I was a bit surprised, but as I was open for new ideas and wanted to explore the new world, I opened an account on the site. I also filled in all the details needed from my side. It was my first step towards something so ‘unknown’ and ‘unexplored’. I realised that this site had different options and features; one of them was to join groups based on interests, there was another option of meeting people just over coffee. The main feature of the site was to host someone at your place or to surf/stay at someone’s couch. This was really a very user-friendly site, which was like a new window for me to look at the world and paint a new portrait. This was all new to me and believing this positive ‘unknown’ was an experience in itself. There were many people on the website, and after seeing a few profiles online, reading references, and photographs, all of them were knowingly or unknowingly convincing me to believe that, yes, there is ‘good’ in this world. There are people who just give as it’s a natural phenomenon. I was sort of convinced that the concept existed and there are people who strongly believe in this concept, but unless I would have experienced it myself, it would have been difficult for me to believe in it 100 per cent as it was too good to be true actually. It was as good as believing in a parallel world, which was ideal and perfect. Well, we all want to live in that perfect and ideal world; however, we all know that it doesn’t exist, and after seeing this website, I wasn’t sure if that world never existed. I was all thoughts.

As I was planning for something very big for the next three months (and I didn’t know exactly what was it all about till now) before I could start planning for the journey of my dream, I decided to have a few rules for myself. This was so not me as I didn’t believe in rules, limitations, and framework. I strongly believed in free flow of thoughts, spontaneity, doing before thinking and just living with no terms, no rules and no regulations. I preferred having a blank white sheet to write or draw than the ruled papers as I felt those horizontal ruled lines on papers limit our thought process, creativity, and spontaneity. My heart was full of three emotions: spontaneity, spontaneity, and spontaneity. My heart also told me that spontaneity is the only state of mind that allows us to be who we truly are. So I decided for the next three months, let me follow just my sweet ‘heart’. So it meant not to have any rules for my journey at all, rather the rule was not to have any rule and listen to my sweet ‘heart’, that’s it. My heart was very happy as it was going to be my navigator and decision maker for the next few months.

For this journey, another one thought was very prominent and crucial within me and that was I won’t ask why for anything to anyone. I will try to accept each day, each place, each experience, and each person as it is. It was a conscious decision, as this journey from me to me to me was just for me to explore me. Heart was very inquisitive about the ‘unknown’ me. The euphoric journey had already started within me.

Most of the people across the globe appreciate uniformity. However, diversity is what makes all of us unique, and diversity has tremendous beauty as well as strength in it. I was in search of those unique qualities, unique experiences, unique moments, and unique people. So the password for me to enter that world of the ‘unknown’ was diversity. Uniformity somehow never fascinated me as it is so monotonous. Variety of mere nothings gave more pleasure to me than uniformity of something. My mind reminded me that uniformity certainly has a set of advantages, but here the point was being oneself and not reaping advantages. My heart won over my mind this time and I knew this battle was going to continue between my ‘mind’ and my sweet ‘heart’ for a while. My heart was the navigator and I had to follow him.

Keeping in mind I had to travel for the next three months, I decided to search for the world map at my place. It wasn’t an easy task as I had not touched a map since my school time. I tried searching for it at my place and gave up hopes after a while. With enthusiasm, I went out to buy the world map and bought it from one of the nearby stationery shops. I had bought a world map that had a booklet explaining each part of the world in brief. After coming back home, I immediately opened the world map and the first country I saw on the map was Thailand. My heart said let’s start from there and I remembered the commitment I had just made to myself not to ask why, so one of the most important decisions was made. This decision-making process was strangely new and newly strange to me as well. The journey was going to start from Thailand, and of course, immediately the bigger picture came into mind—South-east Asia. Now my mind had started giving reasons why South-east Asia; it was geographically close to India as well as it was the region that had strong cultural roots. It was wonderful to learn how my mind was adapting to the situation. Here I was taking a decision to start from Thailand because I saw that country first on the map. I had unconsciously formed reasons to convince my mind already. Now the plan was to visit South-east Asia. I started looking at the map of South-east Asia in detail. Then I opened the booklet, which came along with the world map. I was learning a lot from the booklet as I was new to this part of the world. I learnt that South-eastern Asia is a sub-region of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, and north of Australia. I also got to know that South-east Asia is the region that lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic and volcanic activity.

It was interesting to read that South-east Asia is geographically divided into two sub-regions, namely, Mainland South-east Asia (or Indochina) and Maritime South-east Asia (or the similarly defined Malay archipelago).

Mainland South-east Asia includes countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Vietnam, and Peninsular Malaysia. On the other hand, Maritime South-east Asia includes East Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, and East Timor.

It was also amazingly new to know that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India were geographically considered as part of South-east Asia. I was also getting very sure that South-east Asian countries had great Indian connections and my decision was perfectly perfect to travel there for the next three months.

After all those factual and concrete thoughts, I just looked at the map and thought that probably for three months I could explore four countries. Why only four countries? Again there was no answer for it. The ‘heart’ had prompted and thought about exploring four countries and I was all yes for it. As Thailand was already chosen by me, or let’s say Thailand had already chosen me, I looked around Thailand and decided within few seconds that it should be Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. I tried to reason it out after taking the decision and the reason was funny, as the reason was they were next to each other and I quite liked the way they looked on the map. This was spontaneity redefined for me as well. So many years I wanted to think and decide the way I was thinking and deciding now; however, due to conventional conditioning, I could never do that. But I was so glad that now here, there was nothing right or wrong as decision maker, executer, influencer, or repenter, all the roles were played by just one person—me. And all the decisions had to be right as they were taken by my ‘heart’ and not my mind. The heart was going to be the decision maker henceforth for sure. I personally find the heart is a lot stronger muscle than the mind. So it was all set (for now): four countries for the next ninety days—Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. It was a major step ahead of where I was a few hours ago and I was impressed about the new decision-making process I had followed. It was quick and fast. My mind reminded me, ‘Omkar, sometimes following your heart means losing your mind.’ Honestly I was even ready for it, but I wanted to try this new mantra of life—to follow my ‘heart’ at any cost.

Cherishing each moment, living the heart, and listening to the mind little lesser than usual was the song on my mind. I had to tell myself, ‘Mind, it’s okay, because mind was going to mind me as I was not going to listen to him’—apologies for the male-dominated thought, mind could be her too, actually it has to be her as she is so analytical, precise, and reasoning oriented. To clarify, all those were compliments to ladies reading about this journey.

Keeping that in mind, rather keeping that in my heart, the thought was to experience one capital city and one small countryside in each country, but of course it was open to change and improvement because it was decided by the ‘heart’, which was free flowing and receptive to anything and everything around it without any boundaries and regulations. So the first country to visit was Thailand. The second decision was to keep on travelling downwards from Thailand, i.e., towards Malaysia, Singapore, and then to Indonesia. I was planning to conquer four countries. If I say that I teach management subjects to master of business administration students, I am sure you wouldn’t believe me at all. Oh, probably this is the right time I could introduce myself.

My name is Dr Omkar Kulkarni and I have been associated with international hospitality brands for the last eight years. Teaching is my passion, and fortunately, I could turn my passion into my profession. I have been teaching for the last six years to undergraduate as well as post-graduate students. I have teaching certification from USA, UK, Switzerland, and India. The last academic qualification I hold is a Ph.D. in the field of hospitality and learning management. I also strongly believe in the thought, If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people. Now if you relate with who I was and what I was planning to do, yes, you are right, it was totally paradoxical. However, I was all set to be who I wanted to be always than who I was expected to be.

• So the rough and tentative travel plan was to visit Bangkok then some countryside in Thailand.

• Then to Kuala Lumpur and then some countryside in Malaysia.

• Then to Singapore city and then to some countryside in Singapore (I was little apprehensive as Singapore and countryside were sounding like an absolute paradox to my mind, however, my friend ‘heart’ was planning and taking decisions on my behalf, so mind wasn’t allowed to interfere in the decision-making process).

• And then at last to Jakarta and then some countryside in Indonesia.

I only knew