Ever spent the whole day at your office desk wishing you could just put all those deadlines and commitments on hold and escape for a while? Maybe a couple of quiet weeks in the hills or a life that offered a lot more freedom — freedom to explore some place new, to live on your own terms, to move at your own pace. Or have you spent hours browsing through travel listicles and made mental notes of places you want to visit, estimated holiday budgets and wished you had saved just a little bit more? Happens to most of us. With the rat race and endless work hours, a getaway — an extended one at that — seems just perfect. And that is exactly what these people bitten by the travel bug do — they either quit their jobs or take sabbaticals to live their travel dreams.
Take Lakshmi Sharath, for instance. Her love for travelling began when she first went on a holiday to Australia as a child with her grandfather. “This was at a time when we didn’t have Internet or much exposure to a world outside India. Meeting all those people and seeing a country so different from ours got me hooked. But it took me over 12 years at a corporate job to finally be able to hang up my boots and pursue my love for travel,” she says. The decision to quit was not an easy one, since Lakshmi had by then scaled the ladder and was giving up a plum job. But her love for travel and need to write took over. “One of the first trips I went on after I quit was to Ladakh; it was beautiful and there weren’t as many tourists as there are today. The pristine untouched beauty of the place is something I will never forget.”
For Priya Ramachandran, a content writer and travel enthusiast, travel is her way to experience the world. “It takes you away from everything that is familiar, displaces you from everything you are comfortable with, turns all your ideas upside down and lets you see everything you know differently. You are practically absorbing the world around you, one road, one bus ride, one train journey, one walk, one adventure at a time,” she says.
After a hectic six years in the media, Priya and her web developer-husband Lovell D’Souza decided to give up a life in the cubicle for one filled with meaning. “It wasn’t really a very dramatic decision to quit my job. When Lovell and I were talking marriage, we knew we wanted to explore India together and be free to do what we want, without being stuck to our jobs day in and day out. We thought we would try freelancing (Lovell was already a freelance wedding photographer and I knew I could provide freelance content services) for a year and see if it works out. We always knew we could go back to day jobs, if the situation demanded it. But it’s been two years now and we wouldn’t have it any other way. I won’t say we quit to travel. I would say we quit to live a life which we don’t feel the need to escape from. Travel and everything else in between are added perks,” says Priya.
Interacting with new people and knowing their stories are what drew Niyantha to travel. From meeting a hippie at Gokarna to striking up a conversation with a Rajasthani folk musician, he has done it all. “It’s an inspiration I drew from Humans of New York. I enjoy travelling solo, since I can do things my way. At the end of the day I come away enriched,” says Niyantha, who spent four years with Microsoft in the U.S. before deciding to give in to the wanderer in him.
The decision, of course, was met with a little hesitation by the family. “But eventually they understood that this was not an impulsive decision. They realised that travelling was what I really wanted to do and they have been incredibly supportive ever since,” he says, adding, “I travel mostly in India, usually every alternate month. When I am travelling I like to stay disconnected; so when I get home I take the month to collate my thoughts and the pictures I’ve clicked on my trips. Every time I take a break from travelling I come to Chennai to stay with my parents.”
The travels usually entail places that are off the beaten track and devoid of any packed itineraries. “I don’t think I’ve been on any trip designed by a travel agent. I prefer exploring places at my own pace. Also I like to visit those that are popular for birding activities. It also helps me bond with people from diverse backgrounds, some of whom I team up with for the tours. For instance, when I was on a trip to Europe earlier this year I met a girl at Bruges station. We hit it off and ended up travelling together for the most part of the journey. It is little things like these that add to the fun,” says Lakshmi.
Priya, who calls herself a no-fuss traveller loves visiting places that are least crowded. “Unfortunately, most Indian tourists tend to litter, be loud and disrupt the experience of other travellers and the sanctity of beautiful places. So, we tend to gravitate towards the quieter spots which have more character and their own stories. For example, take even the most clichéd travel destination like Munnar, which is beautiful, but completely commercialised and innundated with tourists and hawkers. So, we travelled couple of kilometres away to the neighbouring town of Devikulam, which is even more stunning and absolutely peaceful. Or the time when once on a whim, we took multiple state buses and travelled through some villages of Maharashtra and saw stunning places which people barely know about. Like a sleepy town called Lonar, which has one of the largest meteorite craters in the world with its own lake and ecosystem; Kaas, a plateau of flowers that blooms only once a year,” she says, adding, “We also once drove from Mumbai to Goa, skipping the National Highway 17 and driving along the West coast for three days. We saw some of the most stunning virgin beaches in the country on this stretch.”
While travel does float their boat, these people also enjoy writing about their journeys; most of which is published either on their blogs or are commissioned by various publications. “I do content solutions and strategy work for multiple clients. We keep going on short trips for a couple of days, apart from exploring hidden corners of Goa every evening. We plan a big trip at least every two months and post our stories on our blog www.happyfeet.us,” says Priya, even as she adds places to her never-ending bucket list.
Niyantha too has a blog of his own that is filled with stories of interesting people he meets on his journeys, while Lakshmi also does projects commissioned by clients. “One has to be mentally prepared though the cash flow won’t always be steady. Sure you might get a lump sum amount at the end of three months, but you have to be practical and realise that you’re on your own until then. It will be safe to say that travelling this extensively does require a fair amount of planning and budgeting,” she says.
