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Wooed by the wanderlust to make it a profession

Mayank Soni on giving up a full time career to chase real stories on the road

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Pics: Mayank Soni
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In my travels over the years I have lived with the last surviving head hunters of Nagaland, trekked over a frozen river in cruel minus 20 degrees and gone backpacking in the tiny yet immensely beautiful country of Slovenia.

Turns out I've had this great to itch to explore distant lands, ever since the mountains first caught my imagination. No it was not a childhood dream or something, it was just randomly triggered by an essay I had read in the Hindi textbook in the final year of school. In my heart I was convinced that it is in the mountains that I belonged and it was a mere accident that I was still scraping a living at the sea level.

My first solo trip
My first solo trip was to Ladakh, after my friends promised me twice to join and ditched on both occasions. Looking back at it, I reckon it was quite the blessing. With just a rough idea of the places I wanted visit and no fixed plan whatsoever, I figured every bit of information on the go. Meeting fellow travellers from across the world and learning about the local culture had got me hooked. There was going to be no looking back.

Work meets fun
Back then I worked as a reporter for a daily in Mumbai and used to sneak off on treks whenever I would get a chance. But I guess just getting weekends off for travels wasn't enough. I had gotten hungrier. So finally around five years ago, I hung my boots at reporting and decided to dedicate all my time to exploring fascinating spots on the map.

I started freelancing for a reputed travel magazine as well as crafting out my own projects. I enjoy the research part as much as the actual travelling. I like to know beforehand what a place has to offer and then dig for local recommendations once I'm on the ground.

The story so far...
In the last decade I have travelled to most parts of the country but it is the unexplored corners of the northeast that fascinate me the most. There are still villages where they have little or no connect to the outside world. I am working on documenting these lesser known tribes and hope to come up with an exhibition on it soon.
More travelling means less time in the city. While my family has gotten used to it, its my friends who have have been coaxing – no, actually coercing - me to take them along on my journeys. So for those who share the passion of discovering new places, I now take photo tours for them under my venture Caribou Drift. Hopefully, now the complaining will stop.

Salary structure
As in a 9 to 5 job, the message 'salary has been debited your account' does not happen at a precise date, at the starting of the each month. With freelancing there is no fixed income and your earnings depend on how well you network. But there is nothing to complain, just the nature of how things work at this side of the fence.
After these few precious years when I look back at my diary, I realise I owe my travel pleasures as much to the generosity of the native folk as much as to the blessings of the travel gods. Recently I went about exploring the remote Gurez valley on the Indo-Pak LOC (Line of Control). During my week long sojourn at different villages I was amazed how they invited a complete stranger into their homes and treated me as one of their own.

The downside...
The only downside of it all (if you can call it that) is that there are no fixed working hours or weekends. But with the open road in sight, who really needs those.

To know what the writer is upto, and where he's planning his next phototour that you can join too, you can always check his venture's facebook page https://www.facebook.com/cariboudrift

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