Recently www.Homegrown.co.in published a beautiful article about people who quit their jobs to travel away.
It was a great article to read that there are many other people who share your mindset. The article also had a few 'travellers' who should rather be labelled 'tourists', but that's another thing. For what counts, is that it did put forward the thoughts of many travel minded modern day nomads, hippies and free minds - and that, is a treasure.
This is the original published article: http://homegrown.co.in/the-stories-of-18-inspired-young-indians-who-quit-their-city-lives-to-travel/
Owing to what may be attributed to a loss in translation, there are a few things that can often get mistaken. And its not the journalist/writer's fault. It happens pretty often to some of the best writers too. So, i'm sharing the entire story of my cross country travel as i had stated it.
1.Your age
30
30
2.Your bio
Copywriter-Creative director, photographer, fitness consultant, film director-producer.
3.Tell us a little bit about your travel story. What you were doing before you quit to travel, the places you visited and why you did it? I was 25, working as a creative supervisor (copywriting) at Ogilvy One Mumbai. When I started working, I was 15 years old - I never really had the option of choosing what I wanted to do. It was always 'either do a job, or face being homeless'. Somehow that developed quite an angst in me against the comfort zone I had eventually fit into. I was at a point where I could afford to break free and rethink what I really wanted to do and do what I wanted to with my life. I was in a relationship with a person I loved like crazy that I just didn't have the courage to let go of even though it was the right thing to do. I wanted to break out and figure out what I really loved doing - even if it was just for a bit.
So I finally resigned, and worked on a crappy Bollywood film (which i dare not mention) for no pay to explore my love for movies. Eventually found the courage to break up and wish her goodbye. And then packed a rucksack with a camera, 2 pairs of clothes and a tent and set off to travel. I did not even know where I was headed.
I ended up in Kashmir where I met a bunch of my friends who were also travelling there and we travelled together for a while. Then I travelled back to Mumbai, repacked my bag, rested my sun burnt skin (yes you get sun burns in Kashmir due to the UV rays) and then packed my bag again, serviced my bike and headed off for the other end of India - kanyakumari. Over six months of travel that ensued, I covered the north south axis of india, made new friends, wrote a journal, tried every alcohol and drug available enroute the journey ( that was kind of a big deal since I don't smoke and I drink just twice a year).
When I returned, I applied for admission to a film school, moved cities, studied in New York and took up film making as my primary profession and also studied fitness sciences and learnt to train and manage athletes. Though my love for advertising, still runs in my veins. :-) To think of it, that trip saved my life.
So I finally resigned, and worked on a crappy Bollywood film (which i dare not mention) for no pay to explore my love for movies. Eventually found the courage to break up and wish her goodbye. And then packed a rucksack with a camera, 2 pairs of clothes and a tent and set off to travel. I did not even know where I was headed.
I ended up in Kashmir where I met a bunch of my friends who were also travelling there and we travelled together for a while. Then I travelled back to Mumbai, repacked my bag, rested my sun burnt skin (yes you get sun burns in Kashmir due to the UV rays) and then packed my bag again, serviced my bike and headed off for the other end of India - kanyakumari. Over six months of travel that ensued, I covered the north south axis of india, made new friends, wrote a journal, tried every alcohol and drug available enroute the journey ( that was kind of a big deal since I don't smoke and I drink just twice a year).
When I returned, I applied for admission to a film school, moved cities, studied in New York and took up film making as my primary profession and also studied fitness sciences and learnt to train and manage athletes. Though my love for advertising, still runs in my veins. :-) To think of it, that trip saved my life.
4.How did your choice to quit everything and travel define your life? It didn't define anything. It just gave me many awesome memories and made me happy that I have at least done of the the things that I have always wanted to do before I die.
5.What did you gain from it? Experience. Experience. Experience. All kinds of them. And sunburns and helmet heads. And a major lesson to never use a cheap hard drive to store your travel photos. :'(
6.What did you lose?
6 months of pay and 80,000 in cash is all it cost me. So to look at it, I didn't really lose a thing.
6 months of pay and 80,000 in cash is all it cost me. So to look at it, I didn't really lose a thing.
7.If you could buy a one-way ticket to anywhere, where would you go? I'm not sure I can commit to one place, but whichever that place is, it needs a forest. That's for sure. I'm a jungle child.
8.One inanimate travel companion you'd never leave home without? (Eg: Laptop, headphones, particular book etc.)
A swissknife and a camera.
9.Travel can cure....(complete the sentence) Nothing. But it can sure show you that life is way bigger than the petty things that might be worrying you into thinking that they need a cure.
(If you scout my Instagram, you will find an image of a short line I scribbled on the last page of my travel journal - "How far will you run, if what you run from, runs deep within your heart?". I think that answers this best.)
10.3 words that describe you best. Writer. Adventurer. Thinker. Artist. Jungle child.
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My tattoos were also featured on Homegrown for another neat article:
http://homegrown.co.in/15-
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