My daughter is my only child. We have been a team since my divorce when she turned five.

Since then, somehow, we ended up with a tradition of mommymoons. Just baby and me on adventures, and truly she is still my most favourite travel companion, not least because she reads maps and train timetables like a pro!!

It was a dream when she was little. All we needed was the beach or a pool and we were more than happy to spend our days being beach bums. We simply lived in swimsuits on the beach, carrying on family tradition, as my parents brought me up in Goa as well.

When she was little it was a spade, a bucket and shells, lots of shells. Sun tan lotion. A hat she hated. And sand – lots and lots of sand.

She graduated to jumping waves and swimming with our dog Stormy. They were besties until he died far too young. And she loved more dogs who died and now it’s the cats and dogs we have. There is always so much love with her.

There are other memories of that magical time: a shimmery mermaid swimsuit, a gift from an American cousin. There was a blue tankini, so athletic. Memories of lots of tan lines and sandy bottoms. Memories of a Goa long gone , a Goa where we even mistakenly ate a hash brownie one Christmas at the flea market and were unknowingly stoned all that night. My five year old lit up the dance floor on a cruise boat while I tried to ‘ swim to the lights’ on the far bank. I think we are lucky we got home at all and luckier neither of us are into recreational pharmaceuticals!!

We graduated to safaris in Kanha, Central India, where she buried herself so deeply under the jeep blankets at 5 am we couldn’t find her!!! But she loved bathing the resort elephant Tara, and swimming with her in the river. My fearless child learned a new phrase, Tara badhmash hai!

I remarried, and my honeymoon was spent alone with her in the Andamans as Hubby Darling had to work. She and I both certified as basic, and then advanced open water scuba divers. Of course she was better than me, at 10 years old, in the exams and practicals. She beat me every time in answers and in buoyancy. She stayed down longer than me and enjoyed diving like a fish to water.

We once spent a week alone in Bangkok and had a blast getting lost on the streets, eating our way back to the hotel. We did the Chatuchat flea market, enjoying fresh fruit juices and local coconut ice creams, raw mangoes with chilli and thai street food.

We did a Thai cookery class where she was so adept, the teacher gave her her own stove and wok, and she made Phad Thai like a pro! And never once since then- leaving it to her grandma to rustle up.

Disneyland – Hong Kong was another mommymoon. Her face, her face when she met Snow White and Sleeping Beauty for the first time and that grin when Mickey Mouse took a photo with her!! She enjoyed the roller coaster most of all, Space Mountain. She rode it all day! I managed one round and was shaken. She said, Maa you don’t come, I’ll go on my own. I realised how fearless she had become, and independent.

That trip was special.

We did loads of crazy things. The biggest surprise I managed was ice skating at a rink in HK. she was obsessed with the Disney film Ice Princess and would yearn to ice skate and now she could!! She still calls it her #1 best memory.

My daughter swam with dolphins, rode more roller coasters, went in a cable car. We ate a lot of noodles in HK and a lot of chicken rice in Singapore. I discovered my daughter isn’t fond of birds and finds pigeons creepy. She still flinches when they flutter around European piazzas.

Singapore was even more fun because she loved the metro and the singsong voice announcements.

We had breakfast with the Orangutans in Singapore zoo. She spent all day with the polar bears, watching them swim and dive. She was fascinated, and I hoped she would combine her love for the ocean and her brains to be a marine biologist. Actually, she wanted to become an underwater archaeologist who was also an actress. My daughter loved Bollywood movies, now she watches world cinema as. Graduate in Media and Film from Amsterdam.

School intruded on our plans and for a few years all she did was swot and write exams and not skip school to see the world. The new holiday schedules were counterproductive to any form of travel as exams were always scheduled on the first day after the holidays. I remember when the last day of exmas meant holidays!

There is no greater education than travel, this I firmly believe, as it is a gift I received from my own parents. So Alekhya and I travelled. Anywhere, everywhere, budget travel. It is the best teacher: to find comfort in the kindness of strangers, to see the world at large and be out of the familiar. To eat strange food, sometimes in a hut in the Annapurnas or have a superb meal in a Spanish cantina. To comfortably navigate in strange places, learn new cultures and learn about this vast, beautiful world. To meet new people, communicate with them and make friends. To step out of ones comfort zone and feel alive and excited, to explore and learn every day. To find tolerance and joy in the strange. And to crave Indian food and find the nearest place we can get some, on a cold, foggy night in Barcelona!

She took this little travel seed and chose the prestigious UWC Adriatic in a small town in Italy for college and guess what, I got to visit her and explore this beautiful region. I stayed in tiny B & Bs and hung out with her, exploring nearby towns. We also took time off to visit Florence, Venice and Rome. It was amazing and fun, she was speaking some Italian then. We had some very scary experiences , crawling up to the cupola that crowns the Duomo was nerve wracking and terrifying, but once there, we posed for photos like pros until it was time to climb down. I guess we are both claustrophobic and we are both brave, because neither of us gave up for the other.

Together we have travelled so many places and spent months together in far away lands. France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland with friends and family and alone. We have done planes, trains, automobiles; locandas, airbnbs, hôtels and campsites.

My daughter has taught me many things: Slow travel is the best kind of travel. Punctuality is not my forte. We hate luggage but can’t do without it. We both love coffee and gelatos. We will walk miles for gelato. Give us a night with Prosecco, our very own kind of smorgasbord and a romcom. We love trams and buses and trains. We scour bookshops and browse flea markets where she will forcibly drag me away from buying a retro enamel bread bin in bright neon orange ( she allowed me the Dutch coffee set). We both love to sit together and sip evening chai, out of pretty cups we collect and we will fight over the last dark chocolate biscuit. We celebrated her graduation at the Seafood Bar, demolishing an entire tower of fruits de mer with chilled Prosecco, and then sang drunken songs in the square before we made our way home. I was so proud of her that day, she was all grown up, all mine.

We both love dogs and cats, we love flowers and taking photos. She hates me taking hers. She gets mighty annoyed that I stop to click graffiti on the streets when I spot it. Her favourite colour is not pink. She has an ear for languages and between us we can talk to people no matter where they are from. Through it all, she will eat rajma chawal any day over a sandwich. My biggest relief is that she can ably live and thrive on her own, in a foreign country, since age 16. I have made her an independent young woman, and a capable one.

My daughter has a wicked sense of humour. As a teenager, she got bored in Versailles and made her way through the galleries to sit at the exit . Frantic that she was lost, I soon had security searching for her. We found her sitting and waiting nonchalantly for us! I was rather embarassed!

At the age of eight, she trekked valiantly for three days in the Annapurnas, refusing to be carried by the Sherpa and impressing our guide with her determination to Trek independently. She slept in huts and played with local bhutiya dogs, and walked chattering nineteen to the dozen in her pink suede boots.

Last Year l spent two months with her in Amsterdam as she sat for her finals. I was a lost, broken woman with a second failed marriage and my young adult cared for me and cooked for me and comforted me, while juggling exams and her thesis. She would come find me sobbing, lost in the streets, and gently take me home. She made me walk for hours and patiently held my hand as I wept on park benches. She cared for me like a parent, though it was unfair of me to inflict the burden upon her. She put me back together with her wicked sense of humour, lots of movies and chocolate, grapefruit and wine. And hugs. And tucked me into bed.

Last year we managed to find our way home from South Netherlands despite a train strike, that was quite an experience, to be stranded on a National Holiday!

We finally spent a day with the tulips in Sassenheim, a dream from my childhood come true, and I was thrilled I got to share my dream with her, a legacy from my own father who loved tulips.

She wouldn’t allow me a turn at smoking up on Amsterdam’s famous Bulldog Cafe. She had visions of having to drag me home stoned and she’s probably right about that!

She kept on with her thesis and we celebrated its submission on my birthday with a trip to Paris. She wrote and wrote the final pages on the train to Gare du Nord, and in the hotel lobby before we submitted it and rushed to see Le Roi Lion in french, where she promptly cried and cried when Mufasa died. I think we were both very overwhelmed that day and of course, watching a live Lion King was a phenomenal experience. We then wandered around Paris by night and celebrated at Cedric Grolet the next day.

She has a strategy with food tastings and menus. I have to follow her directives so we get to taste a wide selection. So I have kept her in charge of well, everything!

Her current turn of phrase is the French, oui oui baguette! that always has me cracking up even in my dullest days. Her sense of humour is droll and I have to be very careful around her, coz she can be merciless.

As a parent I am only grateful she is the best of me. Despite all the emotional upheaval at home, she has done me proud by becoming the beautiful woman she is. She still drives me crazy with her quirks but that just makes her more special.

She has just moved back home after so many years away and it’s so wonderful to have her here. As she says, she’s grown up now and I barely know anything about her, like her love for Korean food and modern literature, and music I haven’t heard.

We are a team. She’s the Laurel to my Hardy. The tonic to my gin. She is all the zing and fizz and pop but also the roots to my branches. She is sane and sensible while I’m absolutely scatty and impulsive. She is my rock, and my heartbeat. May we always be a Team.

I have learned so much from her. I forget when I stopped being her parent and this young woman became my bestest friend.