Sometimes the Best Part of Travel Is the People You Meet

For me, the best part of travel is rarely just the destination. It is almost always the people I meet along the way. Sometimes they are fellow Indians I happen to run into while traveling abroad. Other times, they are locals who live there. Either way, travel experiences often become more meaningful because of the people you unexpectedly connect with.

It always amazes me how you can visit a completely new place and instantly click with someone. Someone you had almost zero chance of meeting in your life. Someone you may never meet again. There is something both beautiful and bittersweet about that.

For a brief moment, you feel understood. You find a kind of ease in being yourself. It makes you wish there was someone like that back home. A friend with whom conversations flow naturally, and silence is comfortable. But when the trip ends, you leave with the quiet realization that a part of that connection belongs to that place and moment. And you need to regrettably acknowledge and accept that fact and move on.

Now that I am back in India after my trip to the North East, I realize something interesting. What stays with me is not the destination or the sightseeing. It is the people I connected with during my travels. The random conversations, the shared laughter, and the small moments that made the journey special.

Those encounters also reminded me of something important. Even in my 40s, making new friends is still very much possible. Travel has a funny way of proving that meaningful connections can happen at any stage of life.

Of course, we can stay connected online. Social media and messaging apps make it easy to keep in touch with people you meet while traveling. But it is never quite the same as meeting someone face to face. There is a kind of chemistry in real-life interactions that online conversations cannot fully capture. The smiles, the sparkle in someone’s eyes, the playful teasing, the expressions, and the shared energy of the moment.

That is one reason why travel feels both rejuvenating and humbling. It lifts you into a small dreamlike bubble for a while. You feel lighter, freer, and more open to people and experiences.

But eventually, every trip ends. You leave that bubble behind and return to everyday life. Routine, work, responsibilities, and schedules slowly start filling your days again. Your mind may not be fully ready for reality for a few days. Part of you is still wandering through those travel memories.

Life, however, has a gentle way of bringing you back to the familiar. Slowly, day by day, you settle back into your usual rhythm. The memories of the trip remain, but over time they soften. The details blur a little. The feelings become less intense.

Until the next journey begins.

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Photo by All teams name

An Ode to Not Being Positive All The Time

Covid anxiety is real.

As the number of cases in India continue to increase, it has induced a sort of panic attack in most of us in the country.

Needless to say, I have been posting available resources (oxygen cylinders, beds) across my private social media accounts so that those who need them can utilize the info. All this fact sharing does not make for entertaining, positive, motivational or inspirational viewing. No one is going to feel happy seeing such posts.

But somehow, when you can’t really do anything else, all this resource sharing matters a huge deal for someone like me. That hope that maybe you will be able to help at least one person is what keeps you going.

Take a good look into Indian Twitter, and you will find many doing the same. Everyone wants to contribute in a way or other to help out. It is heartwarming and sad at the same time. Heartwarming because people want to help, sad because of the unending doom.

We keep seeing quotes similar to “share only the good news, share only positivity, see only positive things” but I wish we could see posts on how we need not pretend to be fine all the time. Let’s normalize NOT being positive 24×7. It’s okay to vent out. I hope venting out gets normalized.

I know happy posts (song, dance, smiles) generate a lot of positivity but I know many like me who are suffering along with the country and do not feel like indulging in entertainment as such. There’s a word for this: languish. It borders between happiness and depression and that’s what exactly many are feeling at the moment. For us, too much positivity can be draining and to be frank, slightly annoying.

If you are feeling it all way too intensely, it’s fine, as long as you are in control. If not, please reach over to a professional! Friends & family might not always give the correct advice in dealing with the situation whereas a professional is trained in handling such matters.

Stay safe and don’t forget to mask up!

An Ode to Unknowingly Being Productive

I often wonder why people complain, “I haven’t done anything productive today.”

It is practically impossible.

Why? Let me explain.

What is productivity? By definition, it means, causing or providing a good result.

Anything and everything you do is productive because unconsciously, we are all learning and evolving from even the smallest tasks that we do.

Yes, we are always learning. And learning is productive. I’m not talking only about creative classes or actively honing new skills for work. Those are the things we take up consciously. The visibles.

I am talking about learning from things around you. The invisibles.

Learning a different perspective, a different way of looking at things. This could be from books, even a show you randomly watched, or some random post on the internet including a meme!
Learning how peaceful it can be to sit and stare at nature for a while
Learning to forgive and/or forget
Learning to solve your issues
Learning your family’s needs
Learning how to interact better
Learning to step back a bit and breathe
Learning new ideas

The list goes on.

Jennifer Aniston had famously quoted “No regrets, only lessons” indicating we learn even from our mistakes, if not today then tomorrow.

But the point is, to many of us, these little things don’t count. Probably because these changes are not happening aggressively, screaming for our attention. These changes are very silent. And peaceful. But the thing I find most astonishing is that over time, they compound. Each little change is like a building block, contributing towards forming the person that we will eventually become.

It is only years from now, when you look back, do you realize how much you have changed in this process of learning from everyday things.

You have evolved. That I think, is a beautiful thing to reflect on.