Packing Up Without Looking Back

by Mauktik Kulkarni

After finishing his solo trip in South America, Mauktik returned to the United States with no intentions of traveling solo again. In a mere four years, he got itchy feet again and decided to backpack around the world for one year. Starting from the Middle East, he covered 36 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and South America. He still finds it hard to believe that he survived a technical glitch in a Norwegian flight at cruising altitude, debauchery in Barcelona, demoralizing sights of a Palestinian refugee camp, intense interrogation at the Israeli border, depressing history lessons in Germany and Poland, 50 degrees Celsius temperatures in the Moroccan desert, bout of diarrhoea while climbing Kilimanjaro, shark cage diving in South Africa, the stiff language barrier in China, eating strange food in South East Asia, scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, madness of the Carnival in Rio, walking on the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina, and the suffocating heat, humidity, and mosquitoes of the Amazon jungle. This is your front row seat to wanderlust on steroids; a kind of journey that takes you around the world and helps you connect with yourself.

259 pages, Paperback