After all has been said and done, there is still more to blogging than is let on. I imbibe this from a group of twenty-somethings who have collectively put together Chandigarh’s first eMagzin. I learnt of them at the Blogs Who Meet evening at the Café Kaffee Kuch a couple of weeks ago. Eager, earnest and brimming with ideas, I was approached by one of them to write for their travel section. I suggested they visit my blog to ascertain if that’s the kind of travel expression they wanted. It also bought me some time to peruse their work.
A couple of days later, even as I struggled to make sense of their superior use of technology in bringing out an online journal, I received a call requesting a meeting to firm things up. I dressed appropriately for my ‘interview’ with their automobile expert and food technologist. Since we were meeting at a Café Coffee Day, I thought it necessary to dress up my jeans with a pair of golden coloured underutilized jogging shoes!
The Café was celebrating their thousandth branch since inception. A fact made loud and 
clear to all customers with a chocolate-y 1000 stenciled onto the frothy surfaces of their orders. Café Coffee Day (CCD to Gen-Next) pioneered the café concept in India in 1996 by opening its first café at Brigade Road in Bangalore. Today, it is reportedly the largest organized retail café chain in India with cafes in every nook and corner of the country, including a footprint in Vienna and Karachi as well.
Yet, they find it impossible to rustle up a decent cappuccino. This time was no exception either. Tepid and quickly turning cold, the coffee left a lot to be desired. My taste-buds, somewhat arrogant with experience, have long rejected wannabe flavours, staying loyal to good ol’ filtered South Indian grinds or the Italian / Austrian roasts that are regularly gifted by generous friends and family.
The evening was not completely unpalatable though; as I got a chance to chew two knowledgeable brains for back-end handling and other geeky stuff till their eyes began glazing over. A lot can be said for youthful resilience because despite that, I got the ‘assignment’. 
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.
