Me, Myself & Jain

Lao Tzu wisely said that “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Well, mine began with this blog on January 22, 2012, as a simple journal to chronicle my travels, that has today grown to become an essential part of my life.

So, whose ME?

I am Snigdha, a banker by profession based out of Mumbai, India. While I love to talk, eat, read, write, make crafty’ things, hang out with friends, etc – “my ultimate thing or passion” is traveling….

Given a choice I would love to live out of a suitcase, but I have loans to pay and a full-time job to take care of them. I do however manage to take enough time off work to travel and catch a decent glimpse of any city I travel to (for work). 🙂

My travel philosophy is – always travel budget, yet be comfortable and I believe that there is no place that cannot be visited because it’s too expensive. I have lived by this motto and managed to travel extensively in India and 31 other countries across Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa and USA!

After-all, traveling budget means you get to visit many more places in the same budget! 🙂

My endeavor is to visit at least 2 new countries and 2 new places in India every year. I set travel targets for each year and you can read more on my travel targets for 2014 here. 🙂

Me and My Travel Companions 🙂

Here is a little more about MYSELF and my quirks on travel –

The obsessive planner  – I love travel planning and can search through countless articles on the Internet, zillion travel books, plan little details and go over it ‘n’ number of times, any time during the day or night! This naturally makes travel guides and travel related books my favorites!

Travel at every possible opportunity – I am always on the lookout for adding in a holiday or a quick trip whenever possible. The holiday list is my most awaited object in Dec- Jan and once my HR circulates this, the next 10-15 days are very busy with mapping out broad options / destinations for all long weekends. Since I also travel a fair bit for work, I always extend work trips over the weekend and am now a pro at getting the most out of any place in the least amount of time available.

Perks of the obsession  – With all this planning, I often get to ‘transport’ myself to another place twice – once when I am reading about it and the second time when I actually visit it 🙂

With this, I also end up planning the travel and itineraries for my family and friends, thanks to which I get to call myself ‘a travel consultant’ (way more glamorous than a banker!).

Slip-ups of the obsessive mind  – I believe the best way to see a place is to first aimlessly walk around for a couple of hours to get familiar, before I ‘get set and go’! I call it my ice-breaker with a new city 🙂

I also travel with an open mind as this helps me meet with new &  interesting people, experience places like a local and discover many exciting things / unusual places and not fuss much over non-availability of vegetarian food sometimes!

Lastly, my travel companion is usually my sister, which limits my freedom, but she makes up for it with her eccentricity! Also, it has made me realize that we’re more like-minded than I ever knew and (best part!) we never get home-sick! 🙂

What’s JAIN?

Jain is a community of Indians, staunch vegetarians that do not eat any form of meat, sea food and eggs (though I am now a vegetarian more out of choice than religion). While this makes finding food pretty tough sometimes; the growing vegetarian / vegan cult works to my advantage and I’ve managed to even experiment with some local cuisines. After numerous trials and errors, I now have my checklist of the right questions to ask in any restaurant/cafe and I’ve also figured my own art of scanning menus! 🙂

So join me on this journey as I pack my backpack, tighten up those shoe laces and ‘GET SET AND GO’.

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My reviews on places to stay: TripAdvisor

Updated this post in November 2019.