On travel ✈️, remote work 👨🏽💻 & photography 📷
Yup, that’s pretty much it.
This week’s blog started out as some other topic. But I decided that it’s probably a going to be longer(than this one) so I’d save it for later. Also because I had to do some more research for that one.
Travel
Last week I spent a couple of days in Karle home stay. It was a much deserved time off from the routine Bangalore life. I also got to play with 🐶! There was Cruise, the guide dog to lead the way and I 🚶🏼along.
I also may have taken my tripod with me for the first time after getting it. What shots did I get? Not many, but this one made it to the top of my list.
I was walking a lot (often slipping on the wet rocks) and watching the birds around me. This is probably why I didn’t have so many pictures. I realized that I felt much more productive after taking a break like this one. I’ve also been wanting to do that Hampi trip ever since Akshay had posted about his. But weekends get so busy that excuses keep pilling up. Hopefully some day soon I should be able to make it. But that day is definitely not today.
Remote work
I’ve worked remotely from Bangalore for some time (not counting the work from 🏠). My interest in remote working culture seemed to grow. This growing itch was the reason why I decided to check out programs like Remote Year, Hacker Paradise and Venture with impact.
Remote Year is a program where the community of digital nomads travel and work out of different cities in the world for an entire year. How cool is that!? They offer a community of digital nomads.
In case you’re wondering how much it costs 💸
Hacker Paradise is also similar to Remote Year. Except that the duration of their programs are from 2 weeks to 3 months. In case you’re wondering about the pricing, here goes-
Now that we’ve identified the programs and their costs, I decided to dig a little deeper to check out the profiles of the people attending these programs and their backgrounds.
I checked out Remote Year first. They were mostly founders, entrepreneurs, freelancers. But then I decided to see the number of Indians(not those who’ve settled abroad but those who joined the program from India). On the page, I found three people of Indian origin.
So why aren’t there many people who get on to Remote Year?
- Their applications got rejected. Remote Year receives a lot of applications every year. Perhaps the ones from India don’t get through.
I think this is highly unlikely. - Remote Year is too expensive for the average Indian.
Now this is interesting on so many levels. Firstly, Remote Year has written a blog post about how much it costs and whether people can afford it.
Let’s revisit the program fee
5000 USD + 2000 USD for 11 months is 27000 USD
27000 USD=1750815 INR (conversion rate today)
17 lakhs doesn’t include your travel to the first destination and back home. Food and other travel inside is on your own. Oh, and by the way, there’s the factor of conversion rates on your local spending. - Modern day racism or ‘visas’
Indians have a tough time getting visas. The first thing that most of us do when we make travel plans is to convince ourselves to not get too excited about travelling and wait until we get the visa issued. - Employers are not open to remote
In India, we’re still in the era where employees are expected to work 9–5 jobs, call their bosses sir/ma’am and wear full formals to office(except on Fridays, when you get to wear ‘smart casuals’). You think these companies would be open to remote working? Hell no!
But we’ll get there. - The Indian mentality
Now this is the biggest barrier.
Expectations
Your family expects you to study, get a job, get married, have kids and the list goes on. What’s worse? You have timelines attached to these! Get into college and get a job by the time you’re 23. Get married between 25–30. Kids within a year of marriage or people start asking questions!
We’re just not people who are designed for this program. But that’s changing. I also decided to check the Hacker Paradise list to see if there are Indians there. I found none!
This was actually surprising because Hacker Paradise does short term travels and also in Asian countries. This means that it’s easier for Indians to get a visa. And yet, there are none!
But here’s to being optimistic.
Photography
I have this new found love for photography. Well, maybe not new, but just play along. I’m now officially in the league of people who carry tripods, a tiny action camera and some phone camera lenses wherever I go. I start taking risky shots, like this one above. Super cold wind blowing hard and the camera out of the cover, I almost felt like I’ll drop the camera.
One of my favourite parts of travelling is figuring out where I can get the perfect timelapse. So here’s to the rest of the year where I hope I can get more time to travel and capture life around me.
This blog is a part of my “One Blog Per Week” resolution. Contains random rambling, learning and experience. If you have any inputs/thoughts, shout out to me at @dun3buggi3.
