It has been three months to the date since I returned from my last long term travel stint! The duration of my last long term travel stint was
90 days incidentally.
And yes, though in the time since my return I have been making a few discreet exits and entries back to my home base (more on that in a post soon, I promise), I have also spent the reminder of my time planning '
Be You For You', my workshops on
expressive writing AND agonising over two things:
(i) not being able to travel (not as much as I prefer to), and
(ii) not being able to write (because I just couldn't, not in the long form at least).
To overcome those blocks, I decided to vicariously live through my own travels β dating from my first solo travel experience in October 2012 until December 2015. To do this, I chose Instagram as my medium. The 75 post series - #NomadicThunkerRevisits β also turned out to be an interesting way of using photographs as a βwriting promptβ to tease those creative juices.
Below are 25 of the more well-appreciated posts (Instagram hearts being the metric) --
I)
Memory No. 1::
You know that voice in your head that won't shut up about asking you when you're going to travel next?
Oh well, I do
I hear her all the time
Self-deprecatory humour aside, I thought it would be nice to dig down into the hard drives and fish for memories from not too long ago. Because it hasn't been that long.
This one's from my first solo trip in October 2012.
Trasi, near Udupi in Karnataka
A beach all to myself
I was most ecstatic that I hadn't driven myself up the walls in my own company those five days
Needless to say, life hasn't been the same since π
Photo: Trasi, Karnataka (India) | October 2012
Do you know that feeling when you pass through a place and in that moment you realise that irrespective of what has happened in the past or will transpire in the future, this is as definitive as it can be?
I've had such moments too many times to recount now. And this journey from Srinagar to Kargil in August 2013 is one of the earliest of those.
That's Zoji La about 10 kilometers away from Sonmarg.