About ‘Experiences & Observations’
We live in the age of short attention spans where ‘stories’ last mere seconds on social media, immersive travel writing has been overshadowed by click-bait articles, intimate, heart-warming stories are buried under a flood of content by aggregators, and veteran travellers are dwarfed by new-age ‘influencers’. However, there are people who enjoy going beyond what is apparent, who value rich experiences and are genuinely curious to have newer perspectives.
This publication is for such people. It is for those of you who are hopelessly curious, who enjoy immersion over superficiality, who are full of questions and prefer nuanced answers. It is for those who are comfortable swimming in the turbulent grey, between the safe shores of black and white.
The newsletter hopes to take its readers on an immersive journey, exploring the incredible geography, rich cultures & intriguing philosophies of the Indian sub-continent, while keeping personal experience as a starting point. There will be a healthy mix of stories, observations, and analyses, all of which aim to enrich your understanding of Bhārata that is India. With every piece, I hope to give you something new, something interesting to take back home, stuff that gets you thinking or makes you smile :)
About Sharath Vishnu
Sharath Vishnu spent the last decade hiking over five thousand kilometers across various mountain ranges of India - primarily in the Himālaya and the Sahyādri. He has also cycled more than twenty thousand kilometers across diverse geographies of the sub-continent.
Sharath started his career as a mountain guide in Karnataka at the age of seventeen and completed his Basic & Advance Mountaineering Courses from Nehru Institute of Mountaineering before turning twenty. He then moved to the Himālaya where he has been working with White Magic Adventure Travel, which has given him an opportunity to go on multiple treks and climbing expeditions - across Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Nepal.
He is passionate about cycle-touring and has undertaken multiple self-supported cycling tours, often solo. He has cycled across the Sahyādris of Karnataka and Maharashtra, to parts of Nīlagiri hills in Kerala and Tamil Nādu, through the Kathiyavād peninsula and the Rann of Kutch in Gujarāt, and across the Thār desert in Rajasthan. He has also done pioneering winter cycling tours in Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh.
Sharath holds a Masters degree in Indian Philosophy from MAHE, Manipal and is an ardent student of Madhvācārya’s Tatvavāda. He is also a student of Indian Classical Music and has briefly learnt the Bānsuri and the Tabala.
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