An old school friend (M) gave the following reason for giving up meat : “One fine day I felt that I had eaten enough chicken for a lifetime. So I turned vegetarian.”

My feelings towards planes and flying are approaching a similar sentiment. In the past 2 years, I’ve probably flown close to 30 times. Majority of those trips have been to my work headquarters (Jakarta) so there is little chance I can go cold turkey the way he did.

My friend Pravesh rightly observed the over-reliance people have on flying (over trains) even when destinations are an overnight train journey away. I’m certainly guilty of that with my frequent personal trips to Hyderabad.

I’ve justified that with “I’m too busy.. plans are mostly last minute.. won’t get train reservation anyway.”

In the past decade of shuttling between Bangalore and Hyderabad, I’ve traveled by train exactly once. I want to change that going forward.

Now that I’ve decided, can’t wait for my next visit to Hyderabad.