Notes on Nomad Life #2: Personal Life
Answers to "What void in your heart are you trying to fill bro?" and other questions..
As some of you may already know, I have lived a sort of nomadic life for the past 3 years or so.
What is this post about?
In the first part of this series, I wrote about the logistics of living as a vagabond. If you’ve not read it, I highly recommend you start there. It’s probably of more practical use to you than this post. This post will cover more personal aspects of this way of life.
If you’re a lazy bum and just want to jump to the parts that interests you here you go:
“Nomad” sounds pretentious ngl
Equating my modern, comfortable travel, which is a choice driven by leisure, with the subsistence lifestyle of truly nomadic tribes like the Bedouins of Jordan or Changpa nomads of Ladakh — necessitated by survival — feels a tad bit disingenuous and pretentious.
I like the word Vagabond better. It feels more appropriate for my life, without the baggage of pretension and romanticism (okay maybe a little..)
Anyways..
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Okay let’s get into the meaty stuff. Starting with the most commonly asked question:
What void in your heart are you desperately trying to fill bro?
Reflecting back on the past 3 years there are few patterns of behaviour that I noticed within myself that fit the bill.
Retroactive FOMO
I grew up in a very strict household. Up until 12th std, I wasn’t allowed to go out much, other than for JEE coaching classes. No watching movies with friends, no day trips, no hanging out at friends’ houses. A large part of my childhood was spent in my room - studying or reading books. In school, I’d listen to my friends talk about their night out sessions, seething with envy.
Once I became an adult, I internalized this shut-in, non-outgoing personality as a permanent aspect of who I am and continued to live this way, even when I had the freedom to do what I wished. A sort of learned helplessness.
This regret of having missed out on normal childhood experiences, combined with the feeling of helplessness to break out of the shell that I had constructed for myself, became my biggest insecurity in my early 20s.
All my travel adventures and weird experiences, at some level, are in service of making up for lost time & experiences - an attempt at soothing my inner child that not all was lost.
Shifting places as a Dopamine switch
Typically, I stay at a place for about a month or two. The constant change of scenery, social setting & the act of restarting life in a new place every month keeps my dopamine systems running high constantly. There’s always something to look forward to.
I often joke with my friends that whenever I feel exceptionally sad or bored, I simply pack my bags and move to a new place.
Is this healthy? Probably not..
Making time go slower
Routine & sameness makes time go past you like a blur.
I lived in Mumbai for 2 yrs (2017-19). Same apartment, workplace, & routines for 2 years. When I think of those 2 years, all I remember are a few highlights but it’s all a blur - one memory block of mush that feels more like 2 months than 2 years.
But pick any month in the last 3 years and I can tell you where I was, name a few people I met, & recall some interesting experiences.
I have just One Life. I would rather have it be decorated with variety and novelty than be one big block of mush.
How has this lifestyle changed you?
Fair warning, a lot of this is going to sound like self-praise & a bit pretentious - but note that this is all in a relative sense - in comparison with my past self.
Less desires but also less ambition
A large chunk of my travel time was spent in different parts of Himachal, often in small villages, sleeping in ₹300 dorm beds, or simple homestays. Cumulatively, I’ve lived in Himachal for almost a year!
Learning to find joy in this simple life had a huge impact on my mental wellbeing and perspective towards life. I am now a man of few desires and feel much more content with my life. I don't crave the latest gadgets, expensive clothes, or fancy apartments.
I do occasionally crave luxury, ngl. Whenever I pass through BLR or Delhi, I stay at fancy 5-star hotels for a couple of days just to satisfy this craving but that’s about it.
However, this drop in desires also came with a huge drop in ambition—I lost all interest in climbing the career ladder, maximizing salary hikes, and seeking promotions, etc. I'm not quite sure how this will play out for me in the long term.
Unsurprisingly, every time I visit Bangalore, the ambition and desire to grind quickly resurface.
Inadvertent Minimalism
When you travel frequently, the less stuff you own, the better.
Lugging around huge backpacks or suitcases can really suck the joy out of the experience. This forces me to strictly evaluate the necessity of everything I carry.
Over time, this has evolved into an aversion to physical possessions. I carry as few items as possible and think ten times before making any physical purchase. Every few months, I go through my possessions to identify things I haven’t used or don’t spark joy ;) and get rid of them.
Optimising for less luggage has inadvertently made me a minimalist.
Bag Update:
In my previous post, I wrote about my dissatisfaction with my luggage situation . A couple months ago, I replaced the 65L orange rucksack with this 32L backpack. It’s a lot more comfortable that the previous setup but still long way to go.
Less social anxiety - Better at talking to new people
Do something 100 times and inevitably you’ll get better at it.
Imagine living in a dorm room at a backpacker hostel — there are new people arriving every day. Each day, you meet someone new, introduce yourself, ask about their life, and discuss maybe travel and life in general. Over time, you subconsciously begin to notice which topics, stories & jokes resonate with different types of people. You also get better at identifying 'your kind of people'.
Now, I'm not claiming to have transformed into some sort of social butterfly—far from it. But I've come a long way from where I used to be.
Improved self-esteem
These experiences also had a huge impact on my self-esteem. Whereas I once viewed myself as a boring shut-in who was anxious to talk to new people, I now see myself as a (somewhat) normal human being with an interesting life and experiences. This shift in how I view myself has done wonders for my mental health.
Overcoming the 'retroactive FOMO' insecurity also helped reduce the number of nights spent awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering where it all went wrong.
What are the downsides? What do you hate?
Things the Instagram travel influencers won’t tell you:
Transient friendships & Constant goodbyes 😭
What I hate most about traveling is hitting it off with someone cool, only to part ways before the connection can turn into a real, long-lasting friendship. Sadly, this happens waaayyyyy too often.
Slow, long-term travel is great in a lot of ways, but it also means constantly saying goodbye to people you meet—including some you wish you could hang out with more. Imagine going through goodbyes every week for months on end. It can get pretty depressing, fast.
The only fix is to put in the effort to keep the connection alive through social media, but let's be real—things usually fizzle out fast..
No home to go back to
Oftentimes a village, hostel, or homestay starts feeling like home, but it never lasts. The next time I roll through, it's just not the same. The friends I hung out with last time? they've moved on, leaving me to wallow in nostalgia.
It's like chasing a feeling, you know? You find a spot that feels right, settle in for a month or so, and before you know it, you're saying goodbye again. And when you come back around next time, hoping to recapture that magic, you realize the magic wasn't in the place—it was in the moment, the people, the vibe and it just doesn’t feel the same.
So you end up with this weird feeling, like you're always slightly out of place. Everywhere's temporary, nowhere's really yours. It's freedom, yeah, but sometimes it hits you—there's no "home sweet home" to return to, just the next destination and the hope that maybe this one will feel like home... for a little while, at least.
No playbook to follow 🫨
Unlike the traditional life, there’s no set playbook to follow for this lifestyle. Many of the traditional milestones like owning a vehicle or buying a house stopped making sense to me a long time ago. Absolute freedom comes with the responsibility of figuring out what you want to do with it, and sometimes it can get confusing and make you feel lost.
Not fitting in
I often joke that “I’m too normie for my hippie friends and too hippie for my normie friends”. A large chunk of long-time travelers have a hippie streak to them - which I can’t really relate to. To them, I’m a normie tech-bro (fair enough) and I don’t fit in. Among my BLR tech friends circle, I am the hippie and I don’t quite fit in there either.
Dating & relationships 💘
Needless to say, dating while being a rootless vagabond is… tricky.
Living in a city like Bangalore for more that a month drives me nuts - I feel like caged, struggling to breathe. So I cannot date someone who is bound to a city.
An ideal partner for me has to be someone who leads or is interested in leading a similar life - which is rare.
I wish I had better news but so far the prognosis is not looking good.
Inshallah.
What do you wish to change in this lifestyle?
In the near term, here are some of the changes (travel-related) I wish to make to my life:
More Treks
People often assume that I trek a lot because I travel a lot, but that's not really the case. While I do day hikes often - especially when I'm in Himachal - I've only ever done one multi-day trek. There's always been this feeling that I'm not fit enough to do longer treks, but my recent experience trekking in Sham Valley (3 days) has given me more confidence. I'll be trekking more often in the coming months.
Travel adjacent hobbies
I wish to pick up at least one travel-adjacent hobby or skill that'll spice up my days - like surfing, long-distance running, birdwatching, scuba diving, astrophotography, etc. This would offer a way to deepen my connection with the places I visit and make my life more active & outdoorsy.
Surfing is first up on this list.
Preserving Individuality
Staying at backpacker hostels often leads to forming close circles of friends. Some of my best travel memories aren't about places, but simple moments spent with such friends. The downside? Sometimes you get sucked into routines that make you forget who you are and how you truly enjoy spending time.
For instance, you might end up chilling in a cafe with friends all day, even though you'd planned to go hiking - or maybe it’s the other way around. It's a constant struggle to balance social connections with personal goals and desires. I often find myself torn between going with the flow of the group and sticking to my own plans.
Finding this balance is something I'll strive to get better at.
(above section was inspired by a recent conversation with a friend. P, if you’re reading this, thanks!)
Solo Camping 🏕️
I really want to go solo camping - or more accurately I want to become the kind of person who goes solo camping.
I've always considered myself extremely risk-averse, and I don’t like this aspect of myself. In my head solo-camping is a milestone of adventurousness that I want to cross. It represents pushing beyond my comfort zone and embracing a level of self-reliance and courage.
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and that’s a wrap.
I enjoyed writing this a lot - as it helped me organize and better understand my own thoughts. It also made me introspect deeper about my beliefs, insecurities, and how I've changed over time.
If you have any questions or related topics you'd like me to write about, please do reach out to me.
Until next time!
