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A Stunning Sunset at Mandalay’s Irrawaddy River

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A Myanmar Sunset on the banks of the Irrawaddy River, Mandalay

I saw one of the most ethereal sunsets of my life on the banks of the Irrawaddy River in Mandalay. That Myanmar sunset was enough to convince me to wake up before 5 every morning for my twenty day trip in Burma.

It was the last day of 2019. My friend and I had just spent the day roaming around Mandalay ruins, discovering pagodas and ancient temples in the historic town of Innwa, and strolling around Innwa villages. There was a hot pot lunch in between at a place called the Little Panda Hotpot and BBQ Buffet. It wasn’t one of my brightest ideas to stop for a hot pot when we had hired an auto-rickshaw to show us around Mandalay. But the kind driver waited patiently for an hour. Also, I could not be blamed for the do-it-yourself hotpot for I didn’t know the restaurant would ask us to grill and cook everything ourselves without even helping us light the fire under our wok. Let us blame everything on the language barrier.

Curry rich, Asian-influenced, salad-based, unhygienic — these are only some of the phrases that seem to describe Myanmar traditional food all over the internet.

When I visited Myanmar last year, I had high hopes from the Burmese food: a concoction of not only the culinary taste of the hundreds of ethnic groups within Myanmar but also steeped in flavors, ingredients, and recipes from the colorful neighbor China, Thailand, and India.

While you can find fish noodle soups and tea leaf salads at every corner of Myanmar, you can also overeat potato samosas, suck into juicy dumplings, and cry out on spicy curries or run away from fried insects— all the later delicacies can be attributed to Myanmar’s neighbors whose people and flavors both have been generously accepted by Burma.

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How to Find Passion, Hard Questions to Test Your Passion, How to Follow Your Passion, and What If One Doesn’t Have a Passion

You can jump to the individual section right away through this Table of Content

Three Years of My Personal Growth and Travel Blog On My Canvas

And just like that, On My Canvas completed three thriving years on the internet.

Congratulations to us all who have been part of this budding platform through which I want to spread love, life, and hope. I cannot thank my readers enough for sticking with me all the while, for sending me immensely inspirational messages day and night, and for asking me to write more and more. On some hard days, I could not have done it without your endless emails and witty comments.

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Has anyone ever asked you to read books to change your life? I would go as far as to say reading is one of the synonyms of personal growth.

I started reading books, both fiction and non-fiction, sincerely only for the last six years (linked are the best books of the category I read in 2020). But during this time, I read some books that shifted the course of my life. They exposed me to unbelievable facts. They laid open the science I didn’t know exist. They told me stories I could never imagine. They made me cry like I hadn’t before. They made me laugh as if I had nothing to worry about. They accompanied me when I was lonely. They told me life can be lived in many ways. They reassured me it was okay to be who I was. But that I could learn, too.

By a life changing book, I don’t necessarily mean a bestseller.

By life-changing books I mean the books in which the most obvious things have been said in the simplest form; that tell the history of life not as how people want us to know but how it happened; that show life writhing out of the mouth of suffering with full force; that remind us of adventures we had as little children that give sense to our today, too; that seem long and convoluted but essentially they talk about things we have always ignored; that make us reconsider if the thing is worth beating ourselves about; that make us look at life with a child’s eyes again; that make us ask questions we were too scared to even think about; that unravel the science behind all this and help us be a little less clueless; that give us hope that change is nothing but little things done every day; that show us compassion and tell us we are okay as who we are.

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Rules to Live Your Thirties By

On my 30th birthday three years ago, I had written 30 life lessons my twenties had taught me. From exercising regularly to fixing a hung laptop before anything else to not running after money but finding my calling and chasing experiences were the core learnings of my 20s.

As I’m about to turn 33 in less than two weeks, I found myself riding the life lesson wave again. “How am I managing life in the 30s” question stared at me.

Contrary to how it might look like, I always say that age is just a number(as many of my friends told me when I asked them to contribute to this article). Ignoring my steeping age that rushed towards my 30th birthday like a break-less ambassador car and blocking my parents who looked at me as if the time for me to do anything good had gone by, I shifted my life gears in my late 20s — changed my career, left my apartment to travel long-term, found the love of my life, took physical health sincerely, and finally chose life skills over money and ignored short-term gratification.

Though my late 20s lifestyle has poured over into my thirties, life feels different now. Personal awareness and growth have been the top priorities on my mind since I graduated into the 30s decade.

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Why and How to Keep Important Things in Order

Let me tell you a story.

“He Sleeps in a Storm” from a sermon by Rabbi Albert Lewis, 1975, as read in “Have a Little Faith” (page 93) by Mitch Albom.

In Search of the Hidden Butterfly Beach, Goa

The sunrise at the Butterfly beach is beautiful, said Manveer, our Airbnb host. Then he gulped down his entire glass of orange juice.

But where is this Butterfly beach? Didn’t you say it was hard to find? I exclaimed.

I will show you the directions on the phone.

Manveer walked to our table. He swiped right on his son’s photo wallpaper on the phone, tapped on the Google map application, and zoomed in.

I was staying at Manveer’s place, which is on the Agonda beach in Goa, for the second time. The first visit was two years earlier when I had gone to Goa to get some alone time.

Remembering that fun trip when I had read Hemingway while basking in the sun on the beach and watched India England one-day series with an English traveler, I showed up at Manveer’s Airbnb again, this time with a friend. As soon as Manveer recognized me, our friendly banter began in no time.

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To Break the Routine or Not to Break the Routine?

I woke up feeling low-spirited today morning.

As my 7:10 am alarm rang, I extended my arm and fumbled for my phone on the floor, where it lays at night. I switched off the alarm. Then I pulled my arm inside my white duvet again and closed my eyes. My partner shut off his 7:20 am alarm, too.

While he pushed his phone under his crumbly pillow, we took a peek at each other, and then our eyes closed.

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Though we all want to make someone happy or smile, we get so caught up in our work, life, and travel we don’t bother to be any nicer or do beyond what is expected of us.

I am no different, and I openly talk about how my husband and I loosened up on being sweet to each other during the beginning of the lockdown. But then we realized, hey, now we only got each other. We can work together from home, food is still abundant, and the world is quiet. We should sing “don’t worry, be happy” all day (most of the pandemic affects hadn’t hit us by then).

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Covid Update Jan 2024 – Peru is now open to international travelers. Travelers must show proof of vaccination. Those who are unvaccinated have to show a negative covid-19 test issued up to 48 hours before boarding. Find the complete information on the official website of the Peru government.

Hand in Hand With a Peruvian Grandmother in Cusco

A gray-haired lady entered the restaurant and turned her eyes to me instantly. Her gaze didn’t surprise me. During the eight months I had been traveling in South America, I visited indigenous Andean villages and remote islands where the locals had never met someone from India before. My earthy complexion and kohled eyes always raised a plethora of questions about my origin.

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What to Do When You Don’t Want to Work?

What do I do when I don’t want to work?

I have put my computer aside more than once to cry over an unjust email or to get my fair share in a fight with my partner or another close friend.

I have had bad days. I have sometimes taken off on those hard days. Instead of writing, I went out on a drive and bought tiger prawns or cried and slept or read Charles Darwin while drowning myself in chamomile tea.

These bouts of sulking in my misery or fighting followed by pampering and sometimes spending time with the other fighter of the duel leading to the exhilaration and then to that moment of clarity where I justified the time spent crying as just another day lived and felt that life was as clear as a night sky have sometimes lasted for an hour and up to a day or even more.

One young summer of my life, I was living in Himachal, the home of the Himalayas. While learning the flute, practicing yoga, working on my blog, and trying to stick to Vipassana meditation techniques, I didn’t realize that I had buried myself under a lot of pressure to be the perfect Bohemian. Ironically, I was on a laid-back mountain staycation.

One Friday, my abuse of self-expectations pushed me to the abysmal depths of moroseness. I didn’t even want to lift my feet to walk to the bathroom. I spent two to three days lying in bed and weeping and sleeping and avoiding everyone and then hiking to a mountain alone.

In the two days of nothingness, I ignored all work, didn’t practice the flute, and put the yoga and meditation aside for wiser people. And on the third day of the rendezvous, I hung out with my travel friends and chatted away in the sun while eating palak paneer with garlic naan.