Dehradun, March 16 -- Two tourists at a spot that could be anywhere

Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian

This mini-series is all about 'extreme travel' to the so-called 'dangerous borderlands'. Now I can also call them 'UN-stable borderlands' i.e. borderlands made somewhat stable by the U.N. (United Nations) and there are many such around the world. It is no surprise that a lot of them are in West Asia, where the complex borders really are the tools & levers for playing geo-politics with the lives of everyday people.

There we were, in the April of 2016, at the Indian passport control in the Mumbai airport and about to board our Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) flight to Amman. The very concerned passport officer asked why we ...