for self-identity - all in all, I was having a
millennial’s quarter life crisis at the age of
22. One day, I had a panic attack on my way
to work and I knew, this was a sign of my
mind yelling, It had ENOUGH.
Swati Rawat
New Delhi, India
Mud Houses
Nikon D810 200mm F/2.8 1/500s ISO80
The Concepts Of Solo Travel:
Swati Rawat
T
ravel.
One word, two syllables, and a deep
feeling of contentment at the core of your
being.
Just one word, when in action can suddenly
make your day a lot brighter.
One word, endless memories.
So much power…….all enclosed in just one
word!
The Solitary Reaper: Swati Rawat
[email protected]
Strange, isn’t it? How just a word can
instantly make you feel alive, a word as
powerful and lively as ‘love’. But would it be
fair to give the credit to just the characters
that arranged themselves to form this term
while forgetting the essence behind it’s
all so subjective meaning and associated
feelings? Maybe not, but travelling like
many great things, is easier said than done.
People always make plans, some for the
upcoming weeks, other for the coming
70
Vol 2
years and many times, these eggs remain
unhatched and the undeveloped baby
never really comes out of their thin cracked
shells.
I don’t blame them. In this era where people
work hard not just to cope-up with each
other but with the evolving technologies
too, one hardly gets time to take out for
themselves, let alone travel. We get so
consumed in the process of creating a future
that we press a skip button for creating our
present. We trade our bucket full of travel
wishes with shabby procrastination and
we do it until we come face to face with
‘The Push’. Like many travellers, I too was
made familiar ‘The Push’ during my early
twenties and I had never been so grateful in
my life for such a horrid thing because if it
wasn’t for that, I would have never travelled
solo.
Being a 90’s kid, I witnessed the evolving
hues of life before and after the social media
apocalypse. In a digital era with ‘update’
overload where someone at some corner of
the world has something to share, you are in
a constant state of decision making of either
responding to the information (physically
or mentally) or completely ignoring it with
a down scroll. And when you are somebody
who’s fresh out of college, still trying to
figure out your place in the universe and
employed in an office where work is dull
and burdensome, every little new update
looks unnerving. My personal life was
draining down a spiralling rabbit hole and
I was getting consumed by the constant
hammering of existential crisis and a search
And in this unconventional way, I met my
‘Push’.
I wanted to run away to the farthest
possible place as soon as possible but a
quick casual glimpse into my bank account
burst my hopes in the cold mid-ai