Having put off spring cleaning for a number of imaginative reasons, I was faced with the inevitable this weekend. Of all household chores that deserve immediate attention but are merrily ignored, sorting paperwork ranks at the very top for me.
Evidence of which lies in a bulging leather file overflowing with assorted documents 
(usually unnecessary), as a result of year-round sticking of bills, receipts, notes-to-self, notes-to-accountant et al into its fold. Beside it, sits another burgeoning entity, a bag holding my most prized collection: a lifetime of memories in photographs.
Typically, disregarding the more important task at hand, I opted to go down memory lane instead. Four eventful decades flashed by in a few hours as I pored over tiny sepia squares and waning coloured prints in numerous sizes: postcards, 4x6s, and large studio portraits.
Saving the best for last, I reached for my favourite stash, travel pictures. While I am convinced there is a certain je ne sais quoi feel to sifting through prints, turning them over, and reading their fading inscriptions (as opposed to slideshows on the laptop), it is one heck of a tiresome job digitalising them! Dogged efforts paid off and after another couple of hours, I had a few to share from inside Africa.
Camping just inside the periphery of Kruger National Park. The deeper we penetrated the wild, the more secure our campsites got. In Timbavati, we had to abandon our tents and bar ourselves into sturdy huts, in case the Big Cats came a-calling.
As it turned out, it was we who went a-looking, and found a lazy pride lolling around post a large meal comprising giraffe. Yes, we found the kill not too far from this spot. I was left wondering if it could have been any one of these we had spotted earlier that day…
I consider myself fortunate that I managed to spot and capture in print the famed Big Five during my safari trip to Kruger, even though I have no ‘leopard prints’ of note to share. Considered the five most difficult animals to hunt on foot in Africa, this term was coined by white hunters when they realised how elusive the lion, the leopard, the elephant, the rhinoceros and the buffalo were. I, fortunately, am in a position to differ with them 
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.
