If you really want to know me, forget the résumé, the job titles, the degrees, and all the serious adult stuff for a minute. I think the easiest way to understand me is to imagine someone who is simultaneously trying to figure life out and having as much fun with it as possible along the way.
I’m Vishal. I’m the kind of person who can have a completely normal conversation with you one minute and then suddenly say, “You know what? Let’s go somewhere,” and actually mean it. I love spontaneous plans, good food, beautiful places, ridiculous conversations, music that makes me feel something, and people who are unapologetically themselves. I’m curious about almost everything, which is both a blessing and occasionally a problem because my brain rarely knows when to shut up.
I’ve always had a bit of a “let’s see what happens” relationship with life. I like experiences more than perfectly planned itineraries. Give me a new city, a good café, a camera, a playlist, and enough money to survive the day, and I’m probably happy.
I love travelling, especially when there’s a little bit of adventure involved. I’ve travelled alone, and there’s something incredibly liberating about waking up somewhere unfamiliar and realizing that for the next few days, you get to decide exactly what your life looks like. You can wake up late, find a random café, walk around without knowing where you’re going, eat something you’ve never tried, take 300 photographs of the same sunset, and somehow convince yourself that you’re a professional travel photographer.
I’m also the kind of traveller who can fall in love with a place ridiculously quickly. Goa, for example, completely got under my skin. I went there expecting a trip and somehow came back feeling like I had left a piece of myself behind. There are places you visit, and then there are places that make you think, “Wait… could I actually live here?” Goa became one of those places for me.
I love cities with personality. I want streets that make me curious, cafés where I can sit for hours, food that makes me close my eyes after the first bite, and people who have stories. I’m interested in the little details just as much as the famous landmarks. Sometimes the best part of travelling is not the tourist attraction you came to see but the random street you accidentally walked into while looking for something completely different.
And yes, I take a ridiculous number of photographs.
I’m also a huge music person. My playlists are basically an extension of my personality. Taylor Swift is not simply someone I listen to; she is practically a member of my emotional support system. I can turn almost any situation into a Taylor Swift reference if given enough time. Happy? Taylor. Heartbroken? Taylor. Travelling? Taylor. Having a minor existential crisis at 2 a.m.? Definitely Taylor.
I love songs that feel like little pieces of someone’s life. Give me a beautiful lyric and I will probably overanalyse it, attach it to a memory, and somehow make it about my own life. I can be completely fine and then one song comes on and suddenly I’m staring out of a window like I’m the main character in an indie film.
I’m a little dramatic.
Actually, maybe more than a little.
But I think being dramatic is more fun when you know you’re being dramatic.
I’m also naturally quite loud, goofy, and expressive. I don’t really want to be the person sitting quietly in the corner trying to look sophisticated. I like laughing loudly. I like stupid jokes. I like making people laugh. I like dancing badly when I’m happy. I like getting excited about things that other people might consider completely unnecessary.
There is a very large child living somewhere inside me, and honestly, I hope he never grows up completely.
I can be incredibly responsible when I need to be, but I also believe adulthood is already serious enough. Bills exist. Jobs exist. Responsibilities exist. Why should I also stop getting excited about dessert?
Food is another important part of my personality. I genuinely believe food can turn an ordinary day into a good one. I love trying new things, finding good cafés, discovering local dishes, and planning entire outings around what I want to eat. Sometimes I’m not hungry, but if someone says, “There’s a really good place nearby,” suddenly I have recovered from whatever illness, exhaustion, or financial crisis I was experiencing.
I’m especially attracted to experiences that involve food, travelling, photography and good company. Put all four together and you’ve probably created my perfect day.
I also love people.
Not necessarily everyone—but I love interesting people.
I’m fascinated by personalities, stories, cultures, relationships, ambitions, insecurities, weird habits, and the little things that make someone different from everybody else. I want to know what makes people laugh when nobody is watching. I want to know what song they secretly love. I want to know where they would go if money didn’t matter. I want to know what their childhood self would think of who they became.
I think genuine connection is one of the most beautiful things in life.
I’m naturally affectionate and emotionally expressive. If I care about you, you’ll probably know. I’m not particularly interested in pretending I don’t care just to look cool. I would rather be the person who loves loudly than the person who spends years wondering whether they should have said something.
That applies to friendship too. I value people who can laugh with me, be honest with me, challenge me, support me, and still be ridiculous together. I want friendships where we can have deep conversations at midnight and then spend the next five minutes arguing about something completely stupid.
I’m also very curious about the world beyond my own little bubble.
Living and working abroad gave me a different perspective on life. Being in another country teaches you how much of your identity comes from the environment you’re used to—and how much of it actually comes from you. Suddenly you’re navigating new places, new cultures, different people, different ways of working and living. You learn to adapt.
And I loved that.
I love learning how other people live. I love accents, languages, cultural differences, strange little traditions, and discovering that something I thought was completely normal is apparently very weird somewhere else.
I’m the kind of person who will learn how to say “cat” in another language just because I randomly wondered what it was.
And then probably continue down a three-hour internet rabbit hole about the local version of Harry Potter.
That is genuinely how my brain works.
I have a million interests at any given time. One day I might be obsessing over travel. The next day I’m learning something about marketing or psychology. Then I’m watching a documentary about American history. Then I’m looking up astrology. Then I’m researching cats. Then I’m wondering whether I should start a business. Then I’m planning my next trip.
My brain has approximately 47 tabs open at all times.
Some of them are playing music.
I’m ambitious too, although my ambitions have changed as I’ve grown older. I want financial independence, but I don’t want to spend my entire life working just to say I worked. I want a career that gives me freedom. I want to build things. I want to create. I want to travel. I want to experience different countries and cultures. I want to wake up and feel like my life belongs to me.
I’m interested in digital marketing, content creation, social media, storytelling and the endless possibilities of the internet. I like the idea that something I create on my laptop could potentially reach someone on the other side of the world.
And eventually, I would love to build a life where my work and my personality aren’t two completely separate things.
I want to create content about life, travel, food, experiences, being a little chaotic, figuring things out, and simply being myself. I don’t want everything to look perfect. In fact, I think the imperfections are usually the interesting part.
Life isn’t always aesthetic sunsets and airport lounges.
Sometimes it’s missing a train.
Sometimes it’s getting lost.
Sometimes it’s eating something questionable.
Sometimes it’s sitting alone in a hotel room wondering what you’re doing with your life.
Sometimes it’s making a terrible decision and then laughing about it six months later.
And honestly, I think all of that belongs in the story.
I’ve learned that life can change very quickly. Plans change. People change. Relationships change. Countries change. You change. Sometimes you lose things you thought you couldn’t live without, and then one day you realise you’re okay. Maybe even better than okay.
That has made me more interested in living rather than constantly waiting for the “perfect” version of life to begin.
I don’t want to postpone happiness until I have the perfect career, perfect body, perfect relationship, perfect apartment, perfect bank balance or perfect five-year plan.
I want to enjoy the messy middle.
I want to be 30 and still feel excited about life.
I want to travel somewhere because I saw one beautiful photograph.
I want to make friends in unexpected places.
I want to fall in love without being afraid of how loudly I love.
I want to build a career that makes me proud.
I want to take care of the people and animals I love.
I want to keep discovering myself.
And I want to collect stories.
Because ultimately, I think that’s what life is about.
Stories.
The ridiculous ones. The beautiful ones. The embarrassing ones. The heartbreaking ones. The “I can’t believe I actually did that” ones. The nights you didn’t expect to remember but somehow never forget. The strangers who became friends. The places that became home. The songs that became memories.
So if you’re trying to figure out what kind of person I am, I’d say I’m a mixture of curiosity, chaos, ambition, affection, humour, travel, food, music, and a slightly unnecessary amount of enthusiasm.
I’m someone who can talk seriously about life and then immediately get distracted by a cat.
I’m someone who will romanticise a random Tuesday.
I’m someone who believes a good playlist can fix at least 37% of life’s problems.
I’m someone who would rather have an interesting story than a perfectly predictable life.
I’m someone who wants to see more of the world.
I’m someone who loves deeply, laughs loudly, dreams ridiculously, and occasionally overthinks everything.
I’m still figuring myself out.
But maybe that’s the fun part.
Because I don’t think I want to arrive at some final version of myself.
I want to keep changing.
Keep travelling.
Keep learning.
Keep meeting people.
Keep falling in love with places.
Keep taking photographs.
Keep discovering music.
Keep making mistakes.
Keep laughing at myself.
Keep being curious.
And, most importantly, keep that slightly ridiculous kid inside me alive.
So that’s me.
Not the résumé version.
Not the LinkedIn version.
Not the “Tell me about yourself” interview version.
Just me.
Vishal.
A little loud. A little dramatic. Very curious. Slightly chaotic. Completely obsessed with good experiences.
And always wondering…
Where are we going next?
