As I finished writing the final pages of my first ebook – The Uttarakhand Diaries – Unspoken Tales From The Mountains, I looked out of the window of my study wondering if what I was doing was the right thing?
I mean, who reads travel books as much, when there are more important things to read?
Travel is not only among the last set of words in the dictionary but also among the last set of options in people’s life choices.
It’s like – One day I will travel the world, but before that, I need to take care of office, bills, EMIs, loans, mortgage, taxes…
And then, somewhere down below, deepest down, the ‘wish’ to travel remains buried. Sometimes, that wish goes with the person to the grave, or gets cremated with them, may be.
You need to be the most pessimistic being to think that way, you might imagine!
But this is what I wondered – will people ever read my book? Or will it get buried among the millions of other books that wait to be read. They look fascinating from their cover page but then they have to also compete with other fascinating book titles and covers, right?
All it took was a cup of tea…
And so one day, I was having my evening tea with my wife when she asked – How’s the tea?
I was so busy reading a book that I had left the tea on my side, and was just enjoying the aroma of the tea while it stayed next to me on the table.
And just out of the blue, I replied.. let me taste it and tell you..
And as I did, I asked myself – how do you say the tea is good? If…you never taste it?
How do I know if my book is good, unless people read it?
And in order for people to know that it is good, people should read it first, right?
How do people tell me if my book is worth the read, if I do not give it to them to read?
Uttarakhand Diaries – Unspoken Tales From The Mountains
Kindle Version – Rs.108/-
And Then It Happened!
So, how will it be different than before, I wondered still?
Will it change the way I travel or will it change the way I write my story?
Will it change the way people view me as a traveler? Will it change the way I experience places?
And that’s how it has moved for the last 5 years… one day at a time.
It’s not something you know on the first day.. but every single day after the first day that you take the first steps.
And write another page, of another new story..
And with every story, until you become an authentic version of yourself..
What has changed from a blogger to an author?
When I started off as a travel blogger about a decade ago, the idea was to travel to places as far & wide and write & share about them as much as I can.
As I have continued hopping from one point to another, I have realized that certain parts of the story that have escaped the eyes of my camera and have been left unrevealed had a purpose.
These were moments created especially for the traveler. A snow leopard at a road bend, or the Yeti footprints on snow, or the thin spark of sunshine above the Devkot mountain every morning, or the abundance of mountain treasures that keep unearthing as you walk on them.
I have realized that you can only feel the breeze but can never capture them.. We humans often think that we can control our life. That what we think is what we can achieve. But it is partly true.
We might control where we travel but we can never control how the journey begins and ends. We may decide our next destination every single time, but we can never decide what awaits there.
What we can only do is – flow with the journey!
And that’s what has been the change.
Surrender to the moment
There’s no more control now. The goal is to let the scheme of things decide. I flow where the road takes me.
When I surrender to the road, the path, the journey, where it leads to is an experience.
No trip ever came with the promise of being the most memorable one. Some trips can come with an unplanned adventures too!
If you are starting with the expectation of a promising outcome, you are already part unhappy as what you will see may not resonate with what you expected in the journey.
We can start with the prejudice of knowing a place before we travel there, but we cannot decide that this is what we will also be getting as no two journeys will ever be the same.
As also, no two journeys of two different travel bloggers will ever be the same. And that’s what changed when I moved from merely travel writing to becoming a travel author.
Perhaps you read it right, between the lines already! – It’s all about what you ‘become’ as you keep traveling.
Image Credits:-
- Featured Image by – Stanley Dai
The Trawellblogger 
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