We decided to get out of town for puja and head for the hills. First we spent 2 nights in Darjeeling where we got a great view of the mountains and wandered around town. Three jeeps later we were in Kolakham where we spent 3 nights and got in a good village and waterfall hike and enjoyed the peaceful environs. We also visited Neora Valley National Park but they have closed it to most hiking. The last 2 nights were spent in the Todey-Tangta area next to the Bhutan border, where people have lovely self-sufficient farms and are master gardeners. We hiked up and down the hills and watched a archery competition, a sport the locals are quite keen on. A very relaxing getaway overall.

This year we went out of town for Durga Puja, but I was here for the Massart preview event and visited all but one of the 24 preview pandals, and a few others along the way. It turned out to be an excellent collection of pandals, with a lot of variety. The pandals were not quite done, but what they lacked in completeness was made up for by better accessibility, and sometimes a person to explain the theme and artistic elements.

In a dogged Toyota Yaris we made a loop around Guatemala, from Guatemala City to Tikal, then through the mountains to Antigua, via lots of interesting places in between.

Since we passed by on a visit to Hell's Canyon a number of years back, we had been waiting for an opportunity to go back to the Wallowa mountains. So we decided to take a break from the pandemic and go camping on the Lostine river and hike up to Minam lake. We chose the Shady campground, the one at the end of the road, and it turned out to be shady, spacious and lovely.

A fourth year of immersion in Durga Puja. I didn't have as much time as in previous years, but I still managed to see around 70 pandals.

As part of Fritz's India trip we took a short trip to Varanasi and Bodhgaya.

My third year of Durga Puja immersion.

We decided to try something new this year by renting a cottage in the hills to escape the May heat of Kolkata. The idea was not to take a vacation but to just go there and work. The cottage we picked was near the village of Dhamas in the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand. It turned out to be an incredibly peaceful and relaxing place.

We really needed a break and some fresh air, but we didn't want to take a vacation. Solution: working week in Puri. We went to the beach every morning and evening but worked on our laptops in our breezy hotel room during the day. I could make a habit out of this.

We spent a wonderful, tasty two weeks in Morocco, one week in the cities of Rabat, Fes and Marrakesh, and one week on the road, driving across the Middle and High Atlas mountains to the desert, and over to the old port of Essaouira.

In an incredible second year of frenetic pandal hopping I visited 154 pandals, some of them several times, many of them stunning. The volume of art that gets painstakingly created (and then casually destroyed) every year for Durga Puja is just astounding.

A short trip to see an old rajbari and visit the terracotta temples of Bishnupur.

One grandmother. Five of her grown children. No spouses and no kids. In Thailand. What could go wrong?

The year in which I became a serious pandal hopper after years of mostly ignoring Durga Puja. I visited 88 different pandals in every corner of Kolkata. Durga Puja seems to be one of those things that gets better the more you do it.