A Seemingly Pointless Journey

Value in just driving around...

Hey friends,

Greetings from Mumbai!

I’ve flown down to Mumbai for the first event I’ve been invited to. Can’t reveal many details yet, but keeping my finger’s crossed it goes well.

---

Last week, I took a bus to Rothak to do some street photography in this town 50 km from my university. This is part of a larger, more ambitious goal of mine—to eventually have portraits from every state of India, reflecting the diversity of this country.

One of my Haryana portraits…

I hopped on a bus from Sonipat, and drove through the Haryana countryside. We weaved through rice fields (where I spotted a few nilgai antelope in the distance). This state has a charm of its own, and I sat simply soaking in the scenery.

But when I reached Rohtak 2 hours later, it started raining. I hand’t checked the weather forecast before; it looked like it was going to rain for the evening. There was no way I could do any street photography in that weather.

So after spending an hour waiting at the bus station, I was forced to board a bus back to Sonipat, reaching after another 2 hours. Essentially, I spent 5+ hours simply roaming around Haryana without achieving any objective.

And yet, I think it was totally worth it.

This sudden change in environment was such a breath of fresh air. For the past few days, I was stuck and university and really needed a change of space. I also needed to talk to new people. On the bus, I interacted with these 4 school students seated beside me. They said my Hindi could use some improvement.

Had I not pushed past the lethargy of the weekend and boarded that bus, I would not have seen those sights and interacted with those people. Whenever I force myself to travel, I never regret it (especially local travel). It has opened up the world to me.

I would strongly recommend that people travel by local bus whenever they can. They open up a world that is lost on us when we travel in air conditioned cars. That’s my prompt for the week—travel by a local bus and see what you learn from it. I’ve written a whole article on this, which I’m linking here.

Postcard

The meadows of Uttarakhand around this time of year (October). The Himalayas are a lovely place to visit in October.

Favourite Quote

"I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.” - Richard Feynman

Have a creative, wild and inspiring week!

If you’re new, welcome to The Owlet! My name is Ishan Shanavas, and I am an Artist, Photographer, Writer and Student of the Natural World.

Here I talk about my work, along with curating the most interesting ideas on the internet. I confine them to topics like Nature, Culture, Photography, and Art but often fall prey to other genres.

I would greatly appreciate it if you shared my newsletter and work with your friends. It really helps me out :)