On My Mind Today

Trek to Triund actually should be the first thing to do when you are in Mcleodganj, even if you are not into trekking. It was my first solo trek and it could not have been better.  Life is really about the choices that you make every day. The night before I planned to go to this trek, it started raining heavily in Mcleodganj. I had planned to leave the following morning at 7 am, but it rained continuously from 9pm to 3am. Disheartened, I had cancelled the plan before going to sleep, keeping in mind the weather. But the next morning when my eyes opened at 9 am, and at that very moment, I don't what happened but I knew I had to go to this trek. I suddenly jumped out of the bed, got ready and packed my bag in the next 20 mins, and left my hotel after grabbing a toast from the hotel breakfast table. I knew the first thing I had to do was to buy a raincoat as the weather was not clear yet and it could rain at any moment. The market usually opens by 8-9 am, so it was not di

Link to part I . After we returned to our cottages, we got to know the cliff jumping point was around 6 kms from the cottage. Now for personal travel, the locals here offer you Luna bikes, the ones which have almost disappeared from most parts of the world. They have that much capacity that if you have a pillon rider, you'll have to request him to get off the bike if you encounter a steep uphill. We stopped at  gautami  to have breakfast before heading to the cliff point.     The route to the point was beautiful. You have to take the road towards Sanapur and then there is a right turn on the reservour road. There is a huge reservoir that suddenly appears on the left side of the road and when you see it, you can't possibly continue driving. You have to stop and appreciate. When we saw the cliff from a distance, it looked like a small one, around 25 feet. We were sure it won't be much challenging to jump from here and even asked the locals to show

Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible.  I tend to religiously follow this in my life and the return has been significant. This story started with total randomness.  There was a cultural event going on in our college and it was supposed to end by 11 pm. Surprisingly, our performance ended by 10 and as it was friday, suddenly the thought struck me, 'let's go somewhere on this weekend". When you search for 2 days getaways from hyderabad, Hampi naturally comes in every list. After reading this post, you'll want it to be number one. It was 10.15 and there was a  train to Hampi  at 11.10. At 10.30, it was decided that the weekend would be spent at this world heritage site.  Hampi remained the capital of Vijayanagara Empire for around 200 years. It was chosen because of its strategic location, bounded by the torrential Tungabhadra river on one side and surrounded by defensible hills on the other three sides. At that time, these elements served se

14th June, 6.50 pm I was trying to cross the highway as quickly as I could. There was no zebra crossing at that point and I was waiting for the moment where I would notice a small break in the traffic and would run towards the other end. 40 minutes back, I was congratulating myself that for the first time in my life, I had arrived at the bus station half an hour before the departure time. The place is called Majnu ka tila and is a major starting point for most of the long route buses starting from Delhi. There was a small ground at the back, followed by a narrow street where a large number of buses were lined up. There was a small park on one side of the road which seemed to serve as the natural waiting lounge for the passengers. As expected, the place was noisy with a mixture of sounds coming from all the sides. Bus conductors and bus horns, both shouting for the missing passengers, hawkers crying out all around, sounds of children playing cricket in the park, excited travel

11th June, 2 pm Lazily lying on the bed and feeling bored, I asked my mind : " How do you feel about the coming trip. You must be having some different feelings as it is my first solo trip. What do you think I’d doing there?" . It replied : " Ah! It feels great. Waking up in the mountains, it would surely be a feast for your eyes. Then after having a delicious breakfast somewhere in the city which you don’t know yet, you would go out with your laptop. You'd be doing just one thing : Exploring. Exploring and observing everything around you. The people, the market, the restaurant, the scenery and everything else. No one would be watching you" . It felt great and suddenly, all the lethargy seemed to be transforming into a zest for the trip. I could picture myself just roaming around the streets, talking to different people around me, trying out new food everyday or sometimes, just sitting alone in the mountains with my diary and a pen. But as the day pas

After doing some good research, I have finalized which places I would be going to in my upcoming trip. Considering the time of the year, I have decided to start the project with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.  There are so many places in these states that I think can serve as a good destination for my trip, but I have selected three places based on some factors such as : - good 3g connectivity  A good internet connection is the topmost requirement. - how scenic the place is.  That's the reason after all why I want to travel while working. - places that are already a travel destination for a large number of foreign tourists. so that I can meet other people who are already doing this and interact with them. So let's start with the names of the places: Dharamshala:     I have heard so much about this place in past few years.  There is a very popular suburb in Dharamshala named Mcleodganj. The headquarter of Tibetan Government-In-Exile, the

I wrote about Digital Nomadism in my last post , a lifestyle that is going to change how majority of the world would be working in future, and that future is not too far. After reading about it for some time, I knew I had to try it out once in my life. I am not planning to pursue it full time right now, but I have 2 months of time which I think is a good opportunity for me to get a taste of it.   But as I mentioned in my last post, there aren't many people from India who are doing it. I think 'lack of resources' is one of the major reasons people don't (or are afraid to) pursue this lifestyle in India. I am myself finding it a bit difficult to get started because of this being so unconventional here.   Considering the above two things, I have planned something for this summer.   I am going to start working on a project in the coming days which would be called : 'Exploring Digital Nomadism in India' , wh

My purpose of writing this post is to introduce people to digital nomadism and provide them some pointers to start with, if they find it interesting. You all would be knowing what a ‘nomad’ means and the meaning of digital. So, we get the definition: A nomadic lifestyle of living where people leverage today's technologies to perform their work duties. It is a way of living where people don’t stay at a particular place while they are working. We all know the benefits of travel. It changes the way you think about life, the society and yourself. I won’t start vouching about travel here, we all know that. And if you don’t, just google ‘How travel changes you’, and you’ll know. Going for a 9-5 job has its benefits, but that doesn’t even compare to what all this lifestyle offers you. I recently wrote about Why you shouldn’t work in you regular office . I think it’s pretty simple and obvious, but people somehow seem to forget/ignore it, thinking that they can not achieve thi