Beyond The Tourist Trail

From medina alleys to desert stars, a traveller's soulful detour through Tunisia offers flavours, friendships, and quiet revelations beyond the tourist map; write Vinod Kumar and Monjit P.

- 

When I told my friends in Mumbai that I was heading to Tunisia, most of them squinted, trying to remember where exactly that was on the map. "Isn't that somewhere in the Middle East?" one asked. "Are you sure it's safe?" another chimed in. But the real question on everyone's face was: Why Tunisia?

The truth is, I wasn't entirely sure myself—until I got there. The journey from Mumbai to Tunis was long but uneventful, routed through Doha. I remember the layover more than the flights. At Hamad International Airport, I sat beside an elderly Tunisian couple returning home after visiting their daughter in Chicago. The wife, clad in a soft grey hijab with laughter lines crisscrossing her face, asked me in heavily accented English why I was going to Tunisia. "Curiosity," I said. She smiled, nodded, and offered me a date from her snack box. "Then you will be full by the time you leave." She was right.