TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2024
Frazer Andrade
Aruna Bhayani, the author of the book, ‘Antarctica to Zimbabwe’, lives for six months in Goa and spends the other half of the year in the UK. She was born in Uganda and spent her first 17 years of life there. Since the last 20 years she has been in Goa which she treats as her other home, while for the rest of her life she was in England, where she grew up and where she studied. In England, she was a scientist and worked for many reputed companies like the British Antarctic Survey and a couple of pharmaceutical companies.
“In addition to cooking, my interests are many and varied but my biggest passion is travel, which allows me to see the World. Since I love cooking, and travel allowed me to taste food from different parts of the world, I learnt to cook delicacies from across the globe, thus making me want to write a book called ‘Around the World with Eight Spices’. However, this dream didn’t materialize”, she says.
Aruna mentions, ‘My biggest inspiration to travel came from my papa, who in the 1960s, at the age around 14, took me on a road trip across Uganda. That is when I fell in love with the whole idea of travelling and began writing my personal experiences on a diary.”
Till date, Aruna continues with this habit of writing diaries with personal memories. Initially, a lot of her travel was with her family, her cousins and friends. It was only in recent times that she began travelling individually. Sometimes, she travels solely by herself while of late she has also been part of several organized groups of solo travelers. The whole purpose of her writing this book was to inspire people to travel, especially single older women like herself who may want
to be adventurous but may lack the confidence to travel.
She says, “To travel, you mainly need the zest and energy, the time and money. You can curate your whole experience to make it pocket friendly for yourself and you do not have to be rich to travel.” Her younger siblings love travelling and she became an inspiration to them.
“My paternal aunt who also loved travelling accompanied me several times on my travel. Shockingly, she passed away at a very young age of 49 due to cancer, which also made me realize that life is uncertain and has to be lived to the fullest. Hence, she also played a key role in inspiring me to travel. Thus, I am doing what I love to do without wasting a single moment,” she adds.
“I lost my father when I was 21, who I feel would have definitely supported me in my travel journey. My mom, like any other considerate mother would sometimes hesitate in allowing me to travel alone. However, in the end, she would understand me and my passion and permit me to venture out with her blessings. My fondest memory of my travel journey was my trip to Antarctica which was my dream trip that was fulfilled and which I will cherish for life. It was indeed a beautiful experience seeing inter-cultural influences in every place I visited,” says Aruna.
Speaking about the hardships she had faced during her travels, she elaborates, “There was once an incident in Tanzania when we had an elephant herd that plunged into us when I got some nasty cuts on my face. I am a vegetarian and at times, found it difficult to manage with food, since in those days vegan or vegetarian food was not in vogue.”
However, since she has a sweet tooth, she was able to manage to an extent depending on dessert and local drinks of a given place. “I visited the equator in Uganda at a very young age and revisited it in 1999-2000 when a certificate was issued to me. I have also visited the five lines of latitudes: the Arctic Circle, the Antarctic Circle, the Tropic of Cancer, the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn,” she mentions.
Among other travel experience certificates, Aruna holds a certificate of successful survival through a hurricane in Antarctica. “When I left Uganda at the age of 17, my paternal uncle offered me a small music box as a farewell gift which had a symbol of Uganda on it. This box was the beginning of my collection of trinket boxes, which I collect as memorabilia from different places I visit,” says Aruna. Now she has a collection of 131 boxes in addition to some exquisite jewelry she picked up from the various places she travelled.
“I urge parents to allow their children to travel when they have a lot of energy, may be as a solo traveler or as part of a group. That way they learn to independently make and take decisions and learn a lot of important lessons throughout their journey out of home. In today’s times with modern technology, your children can be close to you even though they may be far. The problems of language barrier are also solved with easily accessible online translators. Let them grow as they explore,” she appeals to parents.
“With travel being something that couldn’t be separated from my life, the book I’ve written reflects about 6 decades of my life which I began compiling into a book in 2020, during the lockdown period, by referring to my personal diaries,” explains Bhayani.
