Travel Blog by Biku Ghosh (May 2023)
Around the World in 65 years
It all started as an eight-year-old learning to ride running trains in an Indian village station without platforms to see the world.
The quest then continued around the world for the next six decades.
This travel memoir documents early adventures - travelling most of India; training as a mountaineer and climbing lofty peaks in the Himalayas; working with the Red Cross during the Bangladesh war; hitchhiking across most of Europe and almost thrown off a Bulgarian train mistaken as an American, sharing painted Easter eggs from a stranger on the famous sculpted table in Bucharest and volunteering after a super cyclone in Andhra, burying rotten animals.
The journey continues touring over seventy-five countries on all seven continents - from taking a plunge into Antarctic waters to giving away a proxy daughter at a wedding at the North Pole. Scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef and skydiving in New Zealand. Climbing Kilimanjaro and Stok Kangri peaks and trekking to both Everest Base camps in Nepal and Tibet. There are also many close encounters with nature, from Galapagos seals, tigers in India, grizzlies in Alaska, and polar bears near the North Pole to the big five in Africa. Standing close to the gorillas in the mist in the Rwandan jungles. And also swimming with the giant whale shark.
Human spirit and warmth
This book also narrates an account of the human spirit and its warmth, even in despair, witnessed during volunteering over the decades in twelve countries, including Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Bolivia, Guatemala and Mongolia, on five continents.
However, after sleeping in an igloo under the dancing aurora in Greenland in 2020, the journey stopped temporarily as Covid19 came into this world.
In addition to Around The World in 65 Years, Biku has published three other books: I was There, I Think; How Did It All Start; and Indian Immigrant. All his books are available on Amazon.