Our earliest travel memories are, more often than not, shaped by our parents. For a lot of people, it's camping under the stars in the same national park each summer; for others, its getting lost for the umpteenth time in Disneyland. And for some of us, traveling as a kid means venturing half-way across the world each year to see the place your parents grew up—a part of the world that your classmates might not even be able to pinpoint on a map yet.
If you're the child of immigrants, travel can seem more like a necessity than a luxury, says our guest this week, Huffington Post reporter Rowaida Abdelaziz. Not that that's a bad thing, of course. That sense of necessity means visiting (and getting to know) family members you barely get to see, visiting the pyramids before your tenth birthday, and navigating crazy traffic jams in Cairo. And if you're our second guest, Priya Krishna, author of the upcoming cookbook Indian-ish and contributor to Bon Appetit and the New York Times, those first steps you take as a young traveler are forever entwined with memories of food—in her case, a steaming bowl of instant Maggi noodles or a piece of buttered toast heaped with crispy bhujia in India. Tune in to hear Rowaida and Priya compare notes on getting to know places like Alexandria or New Delhi while their peers were cannonballing into swimming pools at Florida resorts, the travel rules instilled in them by their parents (family comes first; be adventurous), and what they took for granted looking back (a lot, it turns out). You can also listen to Lale chime in about family vacations to Istanbul and why the döner kebab is so very important.
Thanks to Rowaida for joining us in the studio, and to Priya for calling in while on the move in Queens (forgive us for the varying sound quality this week). Plus, a massive thanks to Brett Fuchs for engineering and mixing. Check back every Monday for the latest installment of Women Who Travel. To keep up with our podcast each week, subscribe to Women Who Travel on the iTunes store and if you have a minute to spare, leave a review—we’d love to hear from you.
