Timira Gupta chances upon Cinque Terra, a group of villages that satisfy her fish-loving Bengali blood

When you take a holiday for two months in a foreign land with absolutely no itinerary in mind, you realise that you stop being a 'tourist'. You're not interested in city hopping, absolutely loathe tourists although you're one yourself and you'd rather laze by the lakeside, watching happy families unpack their camping kits, than go site-seeing.

On one such afternoon by the lake, a happy camping Italian family invited me over to their tent for a freshly cooked lunch of fish and pasta. I am Bengali and when fish is on my plate, I can't talk of anything else. So after a brief peppering with the whats, wheres and hows of Italian fish, the family finally gave up the secret of the "five fishing villages along the Italian Mediterranean". That was all I needed. This fishing paradiso was calling out to me. A quick sales pitch to two friends, which included the lure of delectable fish in all forms, and we were on a train ride to Cinque Terre.