Dehradun, Jan. 4 -- In the Rub al Khali desert - Nitin's favorite biome

Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian

The year is 2026. It is not 1956 when the jumbo jet arrived on the scene. It is not 1976 when independent travel started 2 decades later, fuelled by the craze for the Lonely Planet travel guides that helped western backpackers make itineraries and find cheap hostels. It's not 2006 either, when the internet arrived but was in its infancy when it came to leveraging it for flight and hotel bookings (no smart phones then) and it is definitely not 2016 when the smart phone came to the fore coupled with free wi-fi and basically you could do everything on it - from travel planning, to finding routes, booking flights via onlin...