My maternal grandfather grew up in a village in Kerala, but within him was an endless curiosity for the world and everything it had to show him and tell him. It was no surprise, therefore, that he always found a way to travel. For a man with such humble beginnings, his unrelenting spirit of discovery took him all over Europe, parts of Africa, the Americas, and across India. Oh, the stories he could tell you.
When the time came, my mother took on the mantle. She and my dad travelled quite a bit in their early years as a married couple—mostly for work. And as soon as I was old enough to be on a plane, you better believe I was.
My dad would sit in his easy chair all his life and travel vicariously through NatGeo if he could—but Mamma? Her blood coursed with the same electric spirit of discovery that her father had instilled in her early on. She raised my sister and me to fall in love with movement—to make do on the move, to not just vacation, but to collect amazing stories illustrated in the brilliant colours of evergreen memory, and to have a hunger to experience and see all that the world, and our country, had to offer.
Oh, the stories we could tell you!
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page
St. Augustine
The Big Smokey Apple 