{"id":9082,"date":"2013-09-18T16:02:52","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T10:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/?p=9082"},"modified":"2013-09-18T16:02:52","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T10:32:52","slug":"travel-plans-myanmar-bhutan-and-parts-of-north-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/travel-plans-myanmar-bhutan-and-parts-of-north-india.html","title":{"rendered":"Travel Plans: Myanmar, Bhutan and parts of North India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Sunset over Bagan ~ Myanmar (Burma) by Martin Sojka .. www.VisualEscap.es, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/msojka\/5285298402\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left: 10px\" alt=\"Sunset over Bagan ~ Myanmar (Burma)\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5288\/5285298402_82d8f8c095_n.jpg\" width=\"320\" height=\"213\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>I could not have been more excited. In a week&#8217;s time, I will be in Yangon exploring its gilded Pagodas and conversing with its longyi-wearing people who always seem to be smiling with their beetle-stained teeth.<\/p>\n<p>A visit to Myanmar is something I have been dreaming for years. I longed to travel into the country when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/131107.Video_Night_in_Kathmandu\">reading Pico Iyer&#8217;s cultural experiences<\/a>\u00a0in the country, reading the stories of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Glass_Palace\">teak-country from Amitav Ghosh<\/a> or hearing about Eric Newby&#8217;s adventure of sailing down the Ayeyarwady.<\/p>\n<p>I always thought of it as a distant dream, but when the country began opening up in the last few years, my antennae were alerted. When the world&#8211;more precisely all the travel magazines and travel writings&#8211;started focusing heavily on Myanmar in the last year, I knew it was high time. It was the beginning of a transformational period in the country, and I wanted to be there before the country changed much.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/varanasi-photography-tour-4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-9088\" style=\"margin-left: 10px\" alt=\"Varanasi Photography Tour\" src=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/varanasi-photography-tour-4-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/rajasthan-photography-tour-5.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-9087\" style=\"margin-left: 10px\" alt=\"Rajasthan Photography Tour\" src=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/rajasthan-photography-tour-5-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>I will be off to Myanmar next week, spending three weeks travelling through Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay and Inle Lake. I don&#8217;t think I have looked forward any journey so longingly in the recent years.<\/p>\n<p>Soon after I return from Myanmar, I am out again to visit another neighbour &#8211; Bhutan. Later, in November and December months, my travel calendar is lined up with trips to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.darter.in\/photography-tours\/travel\/varanasi\/\">Varanasi on a photography tour<\/a><\/strong>, Darjeeling and its surroundings for a photography assignment, and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.darter.in\/photography-tours\/travel\/rajasthan\/\">Rajasthan for another photography tour<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In Varanasi and Rajasthan, I will be leading photography tours for Darter. Do join me on these trips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I could not have been more excited. In a week&#8217;s time, I will be in Yangon exploring its gilded Pagodas and conversing with its longyi-wearing people who always seem to be smiling with their beetle-stained teeth. A visit to Myanmar is something I have been dreaming for years. I longed to travel into the country [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[281,31,1],"tags":[556,532,141],"class_list":["post-9082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-darter","category-meta","category-uncategorized","tag-myanmar","tag-rajasthan","tag-varanasi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xrJt-2mu","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9082"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9093,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082\/revisions\/9093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}