Naaz Fahmida

Books and movies make pregnancy seem like a bout of ill-health, involving sporadic fainting spells, morning sickness and dramatic mood swings. I experienced none of those.

The joy of going on a family trip is something that unless you have experienced being born and raised within the dynamics of an ever-expanding family, you simply would not understand. I was born into one, where anyone who came within close proximity became attached to the nucleus of our core family, like vines.

I was hesitant at the doorsteps of what was famously named after the street it was situated on, the 160-year-old Temple Bar of the Temple Bar neighbourhood in central Dublin, Ireland.

And although misadventures such as these can turn you into a storyteller overnight, precisely what I am doing right now, and can serve as a remedy to old age, I have heard, feel free to live vicariously through the horrors of my time to help decide what NOT to do!

When I touched down in Miami, as part of my first trip to America, there was no telling that I was in America at all. It could have been Puerto Rico or Cuba! This side to America is so distinct with a flavour uniquely its own – you have to see it to believe it.

Have you been to the most beautiful place on earth? I have. And no amount of photography or superlatives can be an exaggeration to its splendour in reality.

It was in the wee hours of the morning when I was helping my father carry back tea in traditional kulhars inside Howrah station in Kolkata.

I have travelled to over 36 countries and counting in my thirty years, extensively hopped over and lived in the heart of Europe, enjoyed the hospitality of the American waters, touched the Alps back down in New Zealand but everywhere I have been - I have carried an ache in my heart.

For people living in Bangladesh, what can be said about this tucked-away sanctuary, unperturbed by the happenings around the world that has not already been said before? I visited Bhutan first as a ten-year-old and then again, much later in life. And would you like to know what had changed about this place in the fifteen years in between? Nothing!

I find this month to be the best time of the year to do some serious contemplation. In the absence of one of the biggest distractions of

I never expected to see what I saw in Amsterdam on the first of my many trips. Starting to write in this way, about most of the cities I have visited so far, makes me wonder if it does not make me sound a little naive.

It was the first time I realised that a Roman holiday could very well remind you of Bangladesh. Oddly, it is a familiar sight across Rome.