From a 95 job to 247 travel

[Music]

okay firstly i want to apologize

for my complete lack of experience but

welcome to my ted talk

i honestly never thought i would be

saying this and not cracking a joke

but well here we are hi i’m rindah

sharma an average indian woman

and an aspiring travel blogger coming to

you live from spiti

i honestly wish um i was giving this

talk in person so that i would be able

to interact with

all of you lovely people but this works

out fine as well because

this is where i actually started

my journey from and and i’m actually

giving my talk my ted talk here

every story has a beginning and my

beginning dates back to when i was a

child and i used to travel with my

parents to

these hill stations across india i grew

up in a school surrounded by kids who

were

able to travel the world with their

parents and i was great for them but

somehow

knowing my humble beginnings and where i

was coming from

i never felt like i was in a place to

even dream

of traveling the world so the mountains

in india were my safe place

i grew up as a very passionate kid i was

always very enamored by the outdoors i

loved being outdoors

i was always either into sports or i

really like to travel

even though it was with my parents so

when i graduated from school

i was lucky enough to get admission in a

college that also had a campus in shimla

and when i got to know that i knew that

was something i had to pursue and

honestly that was the perfect

opportunity for me to get out of my

comfort zone

and i chose that campus solely with a

mindset of

being able to stay in the mountains

utilize that time to

be independent uh be on my own and also

start traveling

without my parents first two years of my

college were

not that easy i was in an environment i

was not

very flexible and very open to seeing

women doing um unusual things

especially like travelling and trust me

back then traveling was not normal

hardly anyone from my college used to

travel

except these few guys who were already

from himachal

and it was also very difficult to

convince my parents to let me go with a

group of people they didn’t know

to a place they hadn’t been to so i

spent the first two years of my

engineering just waiting for that

perfect opportunity

cut to my fifth semester i started to

realize that time was running out

and i was closer to the mountains then

then i would have ever been

and i also had like this list of places

that i had to have to cover before

my college would end so i got together

eight people

to go on this trek called triune i’m

sure a lot of you have heard about it

so that i would be able to convince my

parents to let me go

and also have my college give me

permission to leave when i started the

trek

i instantly felt in connection with my

surroundings

and with the nature i was so happy i

felt so confident

and you know you miss a lot of things

when you’re traveling with your parents

when you’re just

kids and all these things were starting

to come to me as soon as i started this

trip

i reached the top and i instantly felt

so accomplished

i was also separated from the rest of my

group so it was only me with

two other friends of mine 15 minutes

into reaching the top

we were stuck in a hail storm that did

not end for 45 minutes

after which it started to snow by this

point i had no idea where the rest of my

group was i was

very worried for all of them a lot of

the camps that uh the people that were

already there had set up

were torn because of the hail storm we

had nowhere to stay

uh the little tea stall that we had

taken shelter in the guy decided to

close and head back down to dharamshala

so we had literally nowhere to stay

and mind you this was my first trek this

was my first trip

without the blanket of protection of my

parents

and the planning and everything that

goes behind planning a vacation

that i had no idea up until this point

but the responsibility that came with

this experience

was definitely i was getting a high off

of

i remember then in the morning when we

decided to leave

very urgently because i knew the weather

was going to get even worse

uh that particular day and we had just

begun to

climb down when uh the weather started

to clear out

and the clouds in front of the dholadars

started to move away

and i had never seen such mountains

before

i i still don’t have the words to

describe

the feeling i got when i saw those

mountains

and that is when i knew

i had to had to make traveling a very

very big part of my life

i loved this feeling of responsibility

this feeling of being independent solely

responsible for your own safety

and continue to chase these experiences

now it was time for me to graduate i was

desperately trying to figure out how to

travel full-time

if there was a job that would allow me

to travel

every month or every week for that

matter how i could convince my parents

that i was so passionate about traveling

i wanted to do it

full time but honestly i got no answers

i went nowhere with my research

this was year 2017 when we only had

a handful of influencers and people were

not very open about

their sources of income and how they

were able to travel

but nevertheless i did not stop trying i

did not stop contacting people

on instagram on and on multiple websites

and

this is when i got in touch with this

star photographer

uh anunnae who i began talking on

instagram

and somehow convinced him to take me on

on this trip to spiti that he was

planning that winter i was so desperate

to reach the mountains i basically

agreed to go with five complete

strangers

to a minus 25 degree no networks with me

and since this year i had graduated and

i was not working

i was still trying to figure out stuff

and i was generous enough to sponsor the

trip for me because i literally had no

money

as long as i was able to help him out

with his work since he was already an

influencer back then

he did have a couple of collaborations

that he wanted help with while i was on

this trip

while i was working with him i saw this

whole new world of careers

this whole new world of being

influencers and actually traveling full

time

uh and honestly i knew then this is

something i had to explore

i continued to work with anunna since

that trip to spiti

i began doing social media management

for a couple of clients that we had back

then

and with the money that we earned we

took a couple of trips across india

we then decided to move to dubai to

expand this list of clients that we had

and you’re probably wondering why dubai

no taxes

better work culture and closer to the

rest of the world i

moved to dubai in march 2018 and i know

you’re probably wondering

this was too soon right um that’s what

honestly i felt as well

but uh this this was a risk that i

decided to take for myself

because i was honestly not able to see

anything that was happening for myself

back in india for the next two to three

months

um i continued to work freelance on

social media management

and travel as well and if this sounds

perfect

it wasn’t i gradually learned that i was

not too comfortable traveling and

working because

i was not okay with the fact that

something was interrupting my trips

and i was somehow not about this kind of

life

about this um uncertainty of how much

money i’m going to be making the next

month or if a client would stay on

uh the next month or not and i wanted

some stability in my sources of income

so i decided to start looking for a job

two months

of countless interviews and a lot of

hard work

i finally landed a job with gsk and

started working

in august 2018 and i remember thinking

to myself back then

um oh you know it’s okay i have

responsibilities

i have bills to pay um it’s okay if you

know even if i’m able to travel

once a year it’s fine at least i’ll be

able to do something at least i’ll be

able to travel

once it’s fine and i remember thinking

all this with a very heavy heart

because this is obviously not something

i was

looking forward to do while on the job i

try to hack my way into

maximizing the amount of travel that i

was able to do with the amount of leaves

that i was

given in a year and as soon as my

probation period ended which is

for about six months uh we started

traveling

in feb uh in 2019 and ended up traveling

to 12 countries that year

we did not miss one long weekend every

public holiday we combined with our

annual leaves and honesty just left

we prioritized traveling that year to

the max

so much so that i gave up spending time

with my family

meeting my friends or anything else that

honestly that i like doing because

traveling was the only thing that was on

my mind that year we were working

full-time jobs traveling the world and

trying to grow our instagram accounts to

now

300 and 400k followers and this way we

also

were able to establish multiple sources

of income for ourselves

i’ve obviously missed out on a lot of

important information here

so let’s get into it why did i decide to

not travel full-time

i had responsibilities i also had bills

to pay

and uncertainty was something

i have never honestly looked forward to

back then

since being influencers was not that

popular um i had no

idea how to start and how

brand collaborations work or how you can

actually earn through instagram so i

decided

to work on this on the side till the

time i figure stuff out for myself

and my parents did not approve of

traveling full-time at all

how did we end up travelling so much

with full-time jobs

i’m asked this question all the time on

instagram on how i’m able to manage

a nine-to-five job with traveling this

much and honestly

where there is a will there is a way is

always my answer 2019

was a year where i prioritized myself

when my work started to get noticed on

instagram uh that’s when things started

to pick up

i started receiving um collaborations

from brands and that is when i fully

understood

how you could actually travel full-time

and how you don’t need to

be working freelance in order to travel

i now have

enough experience with traveling and

blogging that i no longer

require my nine-to-five job now let’s

talk about what you guys can learn from

my story

number one try to have or develop a

sellable skill

this will help you figure out how you

can earn on the side

and also not be location dependent

number two

be patient and be passionate we often

forget

the things that we really like to do or

the things that we’re passionate about

when we are so busy trying to build a

life for ourselves

it is very important to have something

that you’re truly passionate about

because this definitely helps you stay

motivated

no matter what you’re doing if you’re

not able to do what you love doing now

you will in the future so figure out

ways you can start

achieving it and work towards it keep

small goals for yourself

and timelines that you want to achieve

those goals by and start working towards

those goals

number three start prioritizing your

life 2019 for me

was self-care 101 because i cheated my

job as my job

and tried very very hard not to confuse

my personal

and my work life while i worked towards

building a career for myself

i did not forget what i was passionate

about let’s start normalizing not

killing ourselves for a job

let’s start normalizing and prioritizing

taking all our leaves

and let’s start prioritizing ourselves

and lastly

i know this one will be a little cheesy

but if you love something purely enough

things will definitely fall into place

all you need to do

is be passionate and be ready to take

the risks for yourself

because thank you everyone for listening

to my talk

hope i have been able to inspire you to

build your own path

be passionate take risks and not go

after having a normal life

[Music]

you