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A home away from home....... For different people it could mean different things. Being brought up in a family where my father served in the Army, we moved alot. Now, for some that tends to be the worst possible thing ever ; almost shattering everytime they had to leave the life they had just begun accepting. But, to me, yours truly, it was something to look forward, a new day, a new place, new faces, new life almost as if I was myself a whole new person. That's where my love for traveling comes. But to me going to a place is not about doing the regular touristy things, but rather to experience the place through the eyes and stories of the people who have lived there, for the essence of any place comes from the people who live there just as the saying goes, " Homes are made by people who live there". I'm lucky to have had such experiences in my twenty-two years on this planet. One such memory comes to the mind, something I'd love to share with the world. When I was 13, my father got transferred to Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India. Till then having lived in lush green mountain areas mostly, this terrain was completely new, exciting and unexplored. I would take bicycle and pedal away in the narrow streets of the town to the beautiful Jaisalmer fort. The fort was home to the old market flooded with jewelry stores with precious stones (that's where I got my ears pierced for the first time and my parents had bought me tiny, delicate gold tops for my newly pierced ears), small restaurants with royal and spicy but tempting rajasthani cuisine. Inside the fort was an area almost an amphitheatre where a folk musician sat and dancing to his tunes were the graceful folk dancers, and right next to the amphitheatre sat old man. This was no ordinary old man, he was descendant of a server of Gaj Singh, who inherited the fort after death of his grandfather Maharawal Mulraj. The old man recollected and told about the fort in it's days of glory, when it was one of the major trading cities in India. And how the British raj led to it's economic decline. So bad that after independence and partition this ancient trade route was permanently shut, and how it affected the people and families and how the Rajput family (royals) at that time supported the public. Now even, though I can't remember the tales he told me back then with accuracy of a computer, I still remember how he opened his heart and doors to his home to us, treating us like family. Maybe just like the tales, he will fade from the memory but a warm and fuzzy feeling will always fill my heart whenever I hear about Jaisalmer popping up in a conversation.