MyStory : When my husband and I left job to travel the world
I am Gayathri, a doctor (Pathologist) by profession, hailing from Bellary, a small town in Karnataka. I later moved to Bangalore after tying the knot with Vijay, who is a software engineer working for a startup in Bangalore. Both of us are travel enthusiasts even before we met each other. It was in the summer of 2013. To make our first anniversary more memorable, we embarked upon a road trip to the magical land of Ladakh. Little did we know that it would change our lives forever!
We fell in love with the mountains of Ladakh and the seed of long-term travel was sown in our minds then! We pursued this thought consistently for almost nine months. Saving up all the money we could, fulfilling our family commitments, deciding on the places that we could travel to, planning the exit from our respective jobs and motivating each other through out! I had to quit my job and Vijay took a sabbatical for six months.
We left home in March 2014 with a 12 kg backpack each. We started our journey in Iran, as it was one of our favorite countries – a land teeming with hospitality, history and culture. We then traveled to Turkey which left us amazed by its rich culture, cuisine and heritage. We traveled extensively through Eastern Europe and fell in love with Brasov (Romania), Budapest, Poland, Prague, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Greece. And then we went on to Southeast and South Asia. Every country was special, more so because of the people we met along the way.
We also did Couchsurfing throughout Middle east and Europe. It’s a great way to meet the locals, live in their homes, exchange culture and cuisine and know the place better! We now have friends all over the world! It also helps when you are on a budget, like us! We were extremely lucky to have opportunities to talk about India in many places. We were live on a radio station in Turkey for an hour speaking about India. We visited schools in Turkey, Poland and Slovenia and spoke to the kids about our country and our culture.One thing we noticed during the preparation for our trip was a lack of content for long-term travel from an Indian perspective. We started our blog to document our travels and write about our experiences. We have a steady traffic on our blog now and are happy to reach more viewers. We want to inspire people to travel more. We don’t need to be rich to travel. We set a budget of Rs. 6 lakhs for two people for six months. And we ended up spending much lesser! We returned to India after six months teeming with excitement and full of wonderful experiences and memories. Life on the road has taught us a lot and we now lead a more meaningful life.
Words fall short to describe the experiences we have had – be it listening with bated breath the painful account of how a Bosnian war refugee escaped from his own country to save himself or flying above the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia in a hot air balloon or talking to the school children in Poland about India or helping a farmer in Northern Thailand grow peppers or simply contemplating over a gorgeous sunset in a sleepy village of Laos.
MyStory is a section of Think Change India. At YourStory, we believe everyone has a story to tell. MyStory is an opportunity for individuals to share their experiences that they hope will inspire others. The editorial team does not independently verify the content under this section. If you have a story to tell, please write to us at [email protected].
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