Police car lights always blink here, no matter if they’re speeding to an intervention or just cruising. Electrical bikes and scooters rule the streets and sidewalks. Cats are everywhere, but oddly no stray dogs. And the Tel Aviv climate in April feels lovely, damp and warm. So much is obvious, but what else is there about the country?

Hummus, mixed olives and red wine. That was our dinner on the first evening in Israel, and on pretty much every other evening we were there. Israeli cuisine is deeply rooted in Middle Eastern tradition, but it’s also so much more. Especially in Tel Aviv, where cultures mix freely, unleashing their tastes onto local foodies.

There’s not much to see here. Some bauhaus buildings, two markets, maybe one or two neighborhoods. But so much to do! Exercise, eat, party and spend afternoons lazily in one of the street cafes. It’s a perfectly livable city, with lots of variety, plenty of freedom and few annoyances.

Is it a month already? Seems like we came back just yesterday. We’re dearly missing the weather of India—the heat, the sunshine, and yes, the humidity of Kerala’s lush green seaside. There’s a lot we loved there and even more we haven’t seen yet. Must. Come. Back. Some day.

A little competition. India vs. Poland. Who’s more developed? Who’s developing more quickly? In Poland we’ve been catching up for the last quarter of a century, and in many ways we still are. It’s always intriguing to see another country on their way to improved living standards and relations with the rest of the world. How’s India doing then?

Two kilograms each, and none of it is muscle. That’s how much weight we gained during the two weeks of eating Indian food. There’s so much of it, and so diverse, we wanted to try everything. And it’s often so good, it’s hard to stop eating, even when we know we should.

We could live there. Adapt, eventually. Find our places, our people, a favorite stretch of beach, good coffee and reasonable access to the internet. If only we were very careful in selecting pieces of reality we like, and pass over all the rest. Bali today is not a paradise, it’s just too inconsistent. But it does have the makings of one.

A bike lane. Not something I expected to see in a city where most streets have no sidewalks, yet there it was. Painted on the side of a road, lit by LED street lights and… casually driven over by cars. Bali is dipping its toes in modernity while still firmly rooted in ways of the old.

A twenty-first century oasis, constructed from nothing in the scorching-hot desert, fueled only by the economic power of fossils (pun intended). It’s too impressive to omit, too exotic to ignore and too tempting not to dedicate a few hours in transit for exploring, and verifying, what little we knew about the capital of Qatar against reality.