Introducing the Songkran Soak Festival, ranging from the unexpected to the deliberate and quirky…. Though there be plenty more where those anecdotes came from; this last one is about Songkran, the water festival of Thailand. The festival, held in April, marks the advent of the New Year, and is all about cleaning, purification, and fresh starts; it signifies the washing away of bad thoughts and actions, and said to bring good luck in the ensuing year.
For me, however, splashing complete strangers with bucket loads of of water, and being doused in turn (often by masked bearers of water-cannons), was primarily the main allure! As part of a thronging party on the streets of Bangkok, good-naturedly chucking icy (yeah, I threw in the cubes to add the bite) water at all and sundry, I count that watery soiree as one of the most alive experiences in my travels.
Images culled from the internet.
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu, travel enthusiast and the author of Adrift: A junket junkie in Europe is the youngest of four siblings born into an aristocratic family of Punjab. Dogged in her resistance to conform, and with parental pressure easing sufficiently over the years, she had plenty of freedom of choice. And she chose travel.
She was born in Shimla, and spent her formative years at their home, Windsor Terrace, in Kasumpti while schooling at Convent of Jesus & Mary, Chelsea. The irrepressible wanderlust in her found her changing vocations midstream and she joined Singapore International Airlines to give wing to her passion. She has travelled extensively in Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, South Africa and SE Asia; simultaneously exploring the charms within India.
When she is not travelling, she is writing about it. Over the past decade or so, she has created an impressive writing repertoire for herself: as a columnist with Hindustan Times, as a book reviewer for The Tribune and as a contributor to travel magazines in India and overseas. Her work-in-progress, the documenting of colonial heritage along the Old Hindustan-Tibet Road, is an outcome of her long-standing romance with the Himalayas.
