Turn life into a melody by doing what you love

My dream

Life has its own set of ups and downs, with the world moving so quickly we are just so consumed with the idea of being a part of the Rat Race that we do everything we can to play it safe, make hay while the sun shines. We look down and work as hard as we can in our prime years, running behind a certain sum of money in the context of using that resource to achieve your dreams and fulfilling the same after you have earned enough. I have 2 problems with this philosophy; First is that, How much is ever enough? Second is that, do you even know if you’ll be alive, young, healthy and capable enough when it is time to stop the rat race and go travel or paint, or just do that passion or guilty pleasure of yours?

I absolutely love travelling, but in a different sense, I love exploring, feeling the place in every aspect of its existence. I love exploring new facts about a new place I visit, may it be their different food habits, something about their people, an unknown custom, or just an unknown place. Along with this, I love putting these things out there for common people to know so that they get a feel of how big the world actually is and there is so much to see, to learn not only about the world we live in but also about ourselves.

My Dream is to explore all this incredibly fascinating things about the world, all on a tight budget and to share my most precious, very doable adventures with the world to help them create their own book of memories.

My Journey

Being the elder of two daughters and having parents who are unduly worried for your safety could never be an appealing scenario to me, a 23 year old girl whose soul craves traveling and exploring the world full of different cultures, food and people. I was born and brought up in Pune. With unending love and overly concerned environment of my home sheathing me, restrictions on traveling, it was Impossible to explore the unexplored world plated in front of me.

In 2016 after graduating, with a lot of convincing my family agreed for a graduation trip, and I ventured my journey as a traveler. My travelling experience started with a trek to Triund (Himachal Pradesh) with a group of 15 people, all strangers. Followed by a trek to Harishchandragandh (highest and the most difficult trek of Maharashtra) in July 2016. And by now my parents had believed that only if they let me lose would I grow. So in the same year, that is 2016, when I got a Finance job, in WIPRO (Bangalore), my family and I decided that I would move here to live all by myself. A decision that seemed impossible a few years ago is my reality today and here I am in Bangalore, a new city I had been envisaging to explore.

Also Read: Life’s Travel Tales

Travelling with work during weekdays and studying for my degree side by side on doesn’t sound like the most suitable combination to practice. This clubbed up with finances to manage for every trip and paying my own bills in a new city, sure doesn’t seem easy but that is when I assured myself that I would do everything in my power to stay in touch with my explorer within. I took it up as an internal challenge to balance it all and I’ve been living up to it. I started travelling within, around Bangalore between free weekends, reduced my trips home, and learnt the art of planning super budget trips, not by choice but by condition.

On the days I couldn’t travel out of the city, I tried doing a little city exploring instead. Just looking for new unique experiences hidden across the city, from themed cafe hopping to doing Chikamanglur for 2 days in just 2500 rupee, from nearby treks to backpacking in Thailand for my birthday last year. In my 2.5 years of Bangalore, I’ve covered over 20 cities and towns across India over 2.5 years! This could have never had happened if I hadn’t taken my first step to get out of my comfort zone. In this journey, I’ve seen myself grow by leaps and bounds.

All this has made me realize that no matter what, in the rut of our daily life, one simply should not miss the experiences that feed our soul. Precisely why I started blogging about my super budget travels or new things I experienced around the city to make people believe. I started blogging (As the_Quirkyexplorer on instagram) about these, Just to make people believe that you don’t need a years savings, or too many leaves or the perfect occasion to break that routine you’ve been hating and that new experiences were something accessible to everyone and it didn’t need a world full of planning, just a decision to go.

Also Read: Positivity, hard work and will to succeed will be your strongest allies in life

Corporate commitments definitely don’t mean you can’t do it all. I intend to continuously keep working on my content to ensure that my words/ pictures and videos can deliver the closest experience to reality to anyone viewing it.

My suggestion to anyone reading this –

Life might seem off-key now, but you can turn it into a melody by doing what you love. You might want to become a painter, a traveler, a writer but just because you have corporate commitments doesn’t mean you can’t do it all. At least take the first step, see how it feels. Face that fear that has been hiding inside you, face it and overcome it. After all regret is always way worse than a failure after a whole hearted attempt and if there is something I have learnt, What ifs are definitely lethal! So while you have the time, step up to it and make the attempt.

Make that trip, take that risk, Join that singing class, write that blog, and make that YouTube video. After all, you don’t even know how long you’d be around here to do it again.