Going Rogue

While travelling long distances by road, in India, wasn’t new to me, the idea of my first ever “road trip” to Michigan, USA, definitely was. And so, imagine my excitement when during an assignment in Chicago, my Palo-Alto based sister, Smita, suggested that we drive along the picturesque lake Michigan to visit the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, and follow it up with a visit to the forest! The prospect of that 350 mile “road trip” after my exhausting assignment seemed so thrilling that without a second thought to our “chalk and cheese” personalities, I told her that I was in. As a journalist, whose job over the decades has entailed covering news stories from the hinterlands, for which I often have to take off on the spur of the moment, in trusty old, yet rugged SUVs, with a camera crew and loads of camera equipment, managing everything on a budget based on my designation in the news organization, this road trip to Michigan State, I figured, would be very different. For starters, Smita, a meticulous planner, would have none of the dashing around that I, as a journalist, have gotten accustomed to, in a frantic bid to file my news