Women on Wanderlust (WOW)

Why do women live longer than men? I found the answer from an article that one of my friends forwarded it to me. Women live longer than men because they have a healthy support system of girlfriends. They gossip from most trivial to complicated issues. They laugh and cry over their troubles, criticize other women, give free advice about personal problems and discuss about latest trends in movies and fashion and move on. The times they spend with their girl friends rejuvenate them and prepare them to tackle bigger issues.

During my Ph.D days in Chicago, we were a group of five girl friends who hung out together; we would go for shopping and sightseeing together. Our first trip was a fishing trip. We went to one of the camping grounds close to Schaumburg, which is a suburb of Chicago. It was the trip in which we spared the fishes and photographed ourselves in weird poses. I always call it, ‘the fishing trip in which we never fished’. Our last trip was to San Francisco. We visited the Golden Gate Bridge and the Alcatraz Island. The sight of the red colored bridge against the light blue sky and the dark blue waters is a view to behold. The trip to San Francisco was a wonderful and magical trip.  After a couple of years, all of us got married and moved to different places. We keep in touch through whatsapp, phone calls, video chats and facebook but that personal face-time sans the technology is hard to get.

 There is a quotation by Annette Gulick regarding travel, ‘When you're young you have time and energy but no money. When you get older you have money and energy but no time. And later when you finally have time and money, you no longer have energy.’ I am at a stage when I have energy and money but not time. Sometimes, I feel like reliving those bachelorette days of sightseeing with the girls. It was during one of such nostalgic days that I discovered about, ‘Women on Wanderlust’.

Women on Wanderlust (WOW), is a travel company founded by Sumitra Senapaty (http://wowsumitra.com/about_us.php). WOW is a travel club which organizes tours around the world exclusively for women. Until now, WOW has travelled to unusual destinations, such as Jordan, Kenya, East Europe, Tibet, Bhutan, Greece, Spain & Ireland, along with the regulars, like Australia, Hong Kong, UK, South Africa, Egypt and Turkey. WOW travel groups consist of women belonging to different age groups, who hang-out for a few days, in a new place, soaking up the culture, vistas and adventures that these places offer. I would love to be part of such tour with diverse set of women from different backgrounds and varied experiences. At least once in this lifetime I decided to go on a WOW trip and invite my girlfriends of my past and present and relive my early twenties.

Above image created from http://wowsumitra.com/about_us.php