When the world is not enough

From tracking gorillas in Uganda to chilling in Antarctica, Prasanna Vee and Sangeetha Ranganathhave travelled together to around 170 countries

May 24, 2017 06:25 pm | Updated 07:50 pm IST

Airports are often associated with high drama. It is outside an airport that Rick Blaine bids goodbye to a tearful Ilsa Lund in Casablanca and reminds her that despite it all, “we’ll always have Paris.” Then there is that chance meeting at an airport which sees Sir Stafford Nye’s life being turned topsy turvy in Agatha Christie’s 1970 spy novel, Passenger to Frankfurt . It is in the terminal (movie of the same name) of the John F Kennedy Airport that Viktor Navorski (played by Tom Hanks) camps, waiting to be allowed into New York. And let’s be honest, no tear-jerking Bollywood romance is complete without an airport reunion, nor a good thriller without a gun chase through an airport.

For globe-hopping couple, Prasanna Vee and Sangeetha Ranganath, though, an airport is where they find their Zen. Prasanna says that he even enjoys the hours he spends in airport lounges. “That is where I plan the micro-itinerary for my next trip.”

Surprisingly enough, Prasanna discovered travel fairly late. “I didn’t have a passport until I was 25,” he laughs. Calling himself “a typical blissful Chennaiite who thought life revolved around Tamil Nadu and everything north of it was a foreign world”, he first travelled abroad with his wife, Sangeetha, on an H-1B visa in 1998. “Our first international trip was the one the company booked to go to the US,” he says.

Ranganath, on the other hand, caught the travelling bug a little earlier in life. “It started when I was a kid, as my father is also a traveller, and every holiday, we would pack our bags and head out to see various sites in India,” she says. From day trips to nearby Mahabalipuram, where she remembers clambering up rocks and exploring ancient buildings, to longer holidays in Kashmir, Agra and Delhi, she has vivid memories of these places. “That kick-started my travel journey. Even today, I have a weakness for ruins and historical buildings,” she says.

 

Travel made easy

The story of “a techie with an H-1B visa jumping on board a plane to join the ‘silicon rush’,” as Prasanna says, is hardly an unusual one. But the move there came with certain hidden advantages. “The US had the best deals when it came to flights. You could fly to any part of the world from there for a very nominal amount,” he says. And so they did.

“The first journey Sangeetha and I took to London in the fall of 1999 changed my life completely,” admits Prasanna, who still considers the city of Dickens, Blake, Chaucer, Byron and Beatrix Potter as “one of the most intoxicating destinations in the world.”

 

The exoticism and variety lit a spark in both of them. Ranganath recalls the people, the cobbled streets, the accents and the pubs of England. “The fire burns bright now,” she says.

The next decade or so saw them hopping on a flight whenever they could. “It helped that we both worked for good companies and were able to afford travelling,” says Prasanna, admitting that they hardly ever spent long weekends or vacations at home, choosing instead to use all the money they made on seeing the world.

 

Sashaying across the globe

In the last 18-odd years, they have traversed this “wonderful planet that we call home” as Prasanna says, with aplomb, garnering unforgettable experiences everywhere they went.

They have careened down an active volcano in Central America, gone night kayaking in Palau, passed through marching penguin armies in Antarctica, and have gone dune bashing in Qatar.

 

The couple, who are now based out of Bengaluru, have their eyes trained on Africa, “Sudan, Central African Republic, Algeria, Libya are a few countries on my list,” says Ranganath. This will take them one step closer towards their final goal, which is visiting, every country in the world, chips in Prasanna.

 

Travelling is a lot easier today, then it used to be, he adds. “The biggest challenge in the early days was having to secure dozens of visas every year (when we had our Indian passports) since less than a handful of countries allowed visa-free travel to Indian citizens back then.”

 

The scene has changed considerably though, he says, pointing out that over 60 countries offer a visa on arrival today, including Cambodia, Togo, Fiji and Guyana. “Everyone should travel. Nothing can help you in understanding and appreciating what you have, than going out of that comfort space and seeing what else is out there in the big , broad world,” he says.

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