TRAVEL TALES of ranaruby

Phnom Penh: A Great Cambodian City’s Journey Through Shadow and Light The Dark Chapter: Year Zero and the Khmer Rouge Time began with the Big Bang about 13.77 billion years ago. Our universe originated and began expanding from Day One, which included the formation of our planet Earth. But not so long ago, on 17th April 1975, a Cambodian schoolteacher, Pol Pot (who had been to Paris on a scholarship to study Radio Electronics and returned to Cambodia to take up a teaching assignment) declared Year Zero in Cambodia. That was in line with the concept of Year One declared during the French Revolution. The idea was to discard and destroy all culture and traditions within the society and bring in revolutionary culture.  President Lon Nol fled Cambodia on 1st April 1975 following a bloody civil war that lasted for five years. And on 17th April 1975, a swarm of locusts in the guise of the Khmer Rouge descended on Phnom Penh to devour teachers, artists, and intelligentsia of the Cambod...

Italian Riviera Photo by Biswajit Sengupta — National Geographic Your Shot : This shot was taken outside Riomaggiore station. For more on Cinque Terre, read my post-http://www.ranaruby.in/2017/10/cinque-terre.html.

Sound of Music : xdesc

ranaruby --- green light: Sound of Music : In the Country of Symphony - AUSTRIA Sometime in mid-nineties, my young journalist brother Ambar returned from an official trip to...

Follow my blog with Bloglovin In the Country of Symphony - AUSTRIA Sometime in mid-nineties, my young journalist brother Ambar returned from an official trip to Austria. He invited us to a party, where, over sips on Scotch, he shared his wonderful moments amidst the beauty of nature in Salzburg. With a glint,  mesmerized and carried away, I listened. The scenes from the musical classic ‘Sound of Music’ flashed across in pieces. But somewhere the traveler in me felt jealous. The very thought that I never get what I long for kept on recurring at the back of my mind. It is true that we humans do not get everything we long for in our lifetime. But this was amongst very special and dear to my longings.   So while preparing my itinerary for the Europe tour in 2017, I requested my sister and brother in law to join us from Frankfurt, where they stay. We drove down the autobahn, with Arindam at wheel, from Frankfurt to Switzerland and after spending 3 days there we moved into Aus...