This travel question plays out in my mind... Time and again..

Travel, is it in our genes.. or born out of necessity.

Growing up we travelled a lot as a family, but it was limited to vacations.   Our home was intact, we were born, nurtured and grew up in the same city, same home, same family unit, give and take a few as one got married, baby was born or an elder passed on.  Not much changed on the home front.  

I wasn't afraid or uncertain about traveling alone, in fact I enjoyed it and was ever willing to go on assignments out of town for extended periods of time, would I have chosen to do so if we had never travelled or if my dad never travelled on the job.  I also migrated to the US to join my husband.

My dad,  he migrated to Bombay like many others from small villages and towns, travelling across India as a lad of 18 to make a future for himself, he had completed high school successfully and also had a certificate in typing.  So, he worked as a typist during the day and went to school in the evening to complete his diploma in chemistry and dyes from the VJTI.  He lived with cousins and in the following years, his mother and brothers also migrated to Bombay to make futures of their own.  My mom, she got married to my dad and her two brothers joined them to continue their post graduation studies and to make a successful lives in the big city, too.  Soon her mom and the rest of her family were in Bombay, also.  They both migrated, settled and made a good life for us sisters in Bombay.  My mom cooked various cuisines that she learned from our neighbors allowing our young palettes to grow and learn new tastes along with traditional fare.

We travelled all over India and very often to the land of our ancestors in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.   Both my parents come from Palakkad Iyer family's whose ancestors migrated from Tamil Nadu to Kerala, 350-450 years ago to become priests in the temples there.  They settled and took up many traditions and cultures of their new land, they changed to accommodate the language, culture, traditions, food habits, etc. of the people in those lands. The palakkad iyers have a unique language that is neither Tamil nor Malayalam and they also have an awesome cuisine, a mix of both their ancestral lands.  They are a great group of people, settled all over the world successfully and I may be completely biased on this last fact.  :)

So back to my first question, is travel in our genes or born out of necessity?  

Maybe it's a mix of both.    I know folks who travel but are not too happy to accept and merge into the societies they live in, the one they have migrated to, they try to make a home away from home, hang on to things they know and are not always happy about being in the new land, they yearn to go back home.  To a home that has changed and is not really the same as when they left it.  An oxymoron in itself and that leads to another question.  How does one define home?  I guess I will leave it here for now..  And go back to writing about our travels, discovering and to learn the history and geography of the land we live in..  See y'all soon with my next blog.