In October 2015, taking full advantage of the sabbatical I have taken from the humdrum of politics, my wife and I decided to take a long holiday abroad. We had heard that Vancouver, on the west coast of Canada, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and we decided to begin our trip from there. We took a Lufthansa flight from Delhi to Frankfurt, and from there boarded a flight to Vancouver. The plane flew over Alaska and the Rocky Mountains, with their craggy and snow-capped peaks.