For almost 7 months now, I was supposed to travel to Edmonton with my Husband who was here on a project. To be honest, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to travel. I had a cosy life back in Bangalore, I knew the city very well, had a lot of friends, had newly set up my own crochet handicraft firm. Moving out meant more change and I had gone through a lot of changes in my life in the past few years , not to mention a lot of shifting homes. But I decided to take the ride and pack.
Its always difficult for an emotional person like me to pack my world in 46 Kgs. Coming to Canada means you pack sweaters, which end up occupying most of the space ( even with vacuum seal bags and only picking light sweaters to layer) and then as an East Indian you want to carry at least a saree and Salwar suit and these aren't easy to pack. With a dress it's just one piece of clothing, but carrying a salwar suit means, you pack 3 pieces at the minimum. Same with the saree, A saree will come with a blouse, underskirt, saree pins, and some nice chunky jewelry to go with it. I had other emotional "baggages" to deal with- my books, my collection of yarns and tools for my crochet and coconut shell jewellery making,my shoes, bags, sketch books. I could have got new ones here, but all these things had memories attached and I had a huge issue with leaving my memories behind. So I picked and chose which ones I would take and which I would leave behind. It was decided to pack my books and leave them at my parents while I slowly downloaded some of them on to my Kindle. My yarn and tools were to be taken with me, Sarees and Salwar suits were reduced to one each given the weather in Edmonton would rarely provide an opportunity for showing off the magic of Indian saree. Till the day of travel, clothes were put in and taken out till finally we figured, we just couldn't reduce the size of one bag and ended up paying for extra baggage :)
Post packing , it hit me that I was actually leaving. Tears flowed as I said bye to my little girl ( my dog) Nithya and my parents. My flight was to leave Bangalore at 1:20 am on 12th August 2015 and reach Edmonton the same day ( local time 8pm) with two stopovers at Hongkong( 6 hours) and Vancouver( 4 hours). I was already very sleepy by the time I got into the flight at 1 :30 am. and slept till the plane almost landed at Hong Kong. 6 hours at the airport was spent walking down and window shopping at about 500 gates of the Airport. Though most airport and airline food is bad. I particularly enjoyed my vegetarian asian food at Pak Loh Chiu Chow restaurant.
Its always difficult for an emotional person like me to pack my world in 46 Kgs. Coming to Canada means you pack sweaters, which end up occupying most of the space ( even with vacuum seal bags and only picking light sweaters to layer) and then as an East Indian you want to carry at least a saree and Salwar suit and these aren't easy to pack. With a dress it's just one piece of clothing, but carrying a salwar suit means, you pack 3 pieces at the minimum. Same with the saree, A saree will come with a blouse, underskirt, saree pins, and some nice chunky jewelry to go with it. I had other emotional "baggages" to deal with- my books, my collection of yarns and tools for my crochet and coconut shell jewellery making,my shoes, bags, sketch books. I could have got new ones here, but all these things had memories attached and I had a huge issue with leaving my memories behind. So I picked and chose which ones I would take and which I would leave behind. It was decided to pack my books and leave them at my parents while I slowly downloaded some of them on to my Kindle. My yarn and tools were to be taken with me, Sarees and Salwar suits were reduced to one each given the weather in Edmonton would rarely provide an opportunity for showing off the magic of Indian saree. Till the day of travel, clothes were put in and taken out till finally we figured, we just couldn't reduce the size of one bag and ended up paying for extra baggage :)
Post packing , it hit me that I was actually leaving. Tears flowed as I said bye to my little girl ( my dog) Nithya and my parents. My flight was to leave Bangalore at 1:20 am on 12th August 2015 and reach Edmonton the same day ( local time 8pm) with two stopovers at Hongkong( 6 hours) and Vancouver( 4 hours). I was already very sleepy by the time I got into the flight at 1 :30 am. and slept till the plane almost landed at Hong Kong. 6 hours at the airport was spent walking down and window shopping at about 500 gates of the Airport. Though most airport and airline food is bad. I particularly enjoyed my vegetarian asian food at Pak Loh Chiu Chow restaurant.
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