Our life reaches that point when deadlines, meetings, assignments, and projects take control of it and the box of memories decide to go on a sabbatical, only to watch you lose your senses and end your days with the dissatisfaction of living yet another day, letting the adventurous, and lively part of you sleep inside your head. And that is the reason why traveling is among the top in our bucket lists, to witness the northern lights, to dive deeper into the crystal blue waters of Lakshadweep, to celebrate Holi with the eccentric crowd in Vrindavan. Traveling helps us find the lost part of us, on the faces of strangers who wave back at you, and kids who pose with you for selfies.
Here is a husband-wife duo who gave up their monotonous jobs to pursue what they loved, to lead a life on the road, as one of the first car-couples from Kerala. In conversation with Hari and Lakshmi from TinPin Stories, who have been taking your eyes along with them in their explorations of the remote and rich culture of our country.
Tell us about yourselves, your backgrounds, and your accomplishments.
We are Harikrishnan and Lakshmi Krishna from Thrissur, Kerala. Hari worked as a sales manager and Lakshmi as a graphic designer. We quit our jobs and decided to do what makes us happy and something that would help us use our creative heads. We are two individuals who love traveling and to experience new things every day. We got married and decided to travel together and share our stories with all, so we started our YouTube channel TinPin Stories.
Daily we receive lots of messages and calls from our subscribers and we believe that it is one of our biggest achievements of ours, and the happiness and satisfaction that we are getting when we do, what we love to.
How did you fall in love with traveling? And what made you take the initiative for being one of the first car couples from Kerala?
We believe traveling makes you a better person by all means. You learn a lot of things which no textbooks and Wikipedia can teach you.
We have done many trips before but wanted to do a long one. We were planning a bike trip to Thailand but then the pandemic happened and destroyed all our plans.
We love to live remotely, traveling around always by staying in a place living with the locals, and learning each place’s authentic culture, tradition, art, and more for the rest of our life. So van life was definitely one of our dreams, but currently, we do not have a budget to buy a van and set it up hence we planned of doing a car life also to avoid public transport. We are traveling in our own vehicle and we stay inside our car. We haven’t done any modifications to our vehicle. We fold our car back seat and put a mattress on it and sleep.
Mostly cooking all meals by ourselves and following all covid protocols. Car life is even can be described as one of our stepping stone to many more traveling dreams.
When you travel, managing the expenses can be uncertain for many. How do you manage the finances and do you have any advice for those who love traveling but are worried about sustaining their funds?
We don’t have any financial advice to pass on as each may have different circumstances and situations. We are doing our car life trip with a few of our savings and also by selling a few things that we owned. Now since one month, we have started earning little from YouTube but since we are traveling that doesn’t satisfy our pockets. To the ones who want to travel but scared of the budget, one thing we have to tell is that you can definitely travel according to your budget and pocket. A budget-friendly trip is always possible once you plan it wisely by yourself. You don’t require a lot money to travel and enjoy.
How do you arrange your stay and food while you are traveling? Do you plan it way ahead or address the needs instantaneously?
Since we are doing a car life we sleep and cook in our car. In fact, that’s our new home. We don’t have any fixed plans and schedules, we have an outline of states that we wanted to cover on this trip but still extremely flexible. When we started our journey on October 28th, 2020 our plan was to cover Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Jammu, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andra, Tamil Nadu in two and half months. It’s already two months and more we have just reached Rajasthan now. We spend a lot of time in a place experiencing the culture and people intensively.
What are the things that one needs to look forward to when we decide to go ahead with an all-India trip by car?
That you love traveling and want to travel sincerely. If you love traveling you shouldn’t be overthinking it, you have to get on the road. We had basic plans only, we were so sure that if we start thinking deeply about each minute things we will never do it. Nothing is too late and nothing is too difficult when you love it deeply. Sometimes you may have to come out of your comfort zone especially in the case of using the loo, bathing, hunger, and all. Definitely do follow the MVD rules and regulations.
What are the goals that you have for each trip? Is it merely visiting places or do you go out to explore the place, its people, and its culture?
While we travel we always make sure that we travel mostly into unexplored and offbeat places that are not so familiar to all. Exploring villages, their traditions, culture, and foods are the most favorite part of traveling to us. We stay in a place, spend valuable time thereby understating the place and interacting with the people around us. When we say goodbye to each place we travel, the farewell is a bit saddening as we do not visit the place but we live in there. Showing the pure essence of each place especially the villages we travel is something which makes us stand out. We portray all these stories in our channel with their full purity and we make sure that the viewer feels like traveling with us.
Could you brief us about your bucket list as an avid traveler? Do you have this one place that you look forward to traveling?
We love to live remotely, traveling around always by staying in a place living with the locals, and learning each place’s authentic culture, tradition, art, and more for the rest of our life. Living in a vineyard working there or farming somewhere and traveling around are some of our bucket lists.
Each trip is a dream for us, every country and places excites us in its unique way.
Travelling opens up windows to people’s lives. Do you have a story that you heard in your travels that influenced you deeply?
During a walk through Udaipur streets, we randomly got into a handmade wire jewelry shop. The shop owners a young couple from Mumbai and Udaipur were inside the shop and we had started a conversation on random tourist attractions in Udaipur. We shared our story and they offered us a chair. By then we had started becoming close already. After our story they said their story, they are couples who travel around spend a few months in each place, setup jewelry store or space in a market and sell their handmade pieces and travel around. Exactly what we wanted to do.
From the trips that you have undertaken, which one is the most exciting and memorable one?
Each trip has been memorable on its own but still, this trip that we are doing currently has one point extra as we are doing a car life now. Our home is where we park our car.
Know a great startup story or want to share your own? Write to us at keralainsider.com@gmail.com and we will get back to you. For more updates follow Kerala Insider on Facebook