Travel Influencer Deenaz Raisinghani recently joined NewsX for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX Influencer A-List. In the exclusive conversation, Deenaz spoke about her love for travel, solo backpacking and her journey so far. Read excerpts:
Speaking about her journey so far, Deenaz said, “It started on a whim for me. I didn’t really think about content creation at that time because when i conceived my child, I had a desire to go backpacking to Europe with her. After coming back, i started writing about my experiences. It was actually a way for me to remember the trip and probably for my daughter to grow up, check up social media, my account and read what we had done. But then, i started seeing a lot of interest from fellow parents, i saw a lot of interest from young mothers who DMed me, “Hey, where did you stayt?’, ‘How did you manage?’ and ‘Is it even possible to take a child as young as a year old to Europe, do your own thing, have a really nice time and come back. I said yes, it is possible. That’s when i realised that there is sort of a gap in the market, where a lot of people don’t know about backpacking as a doable lifestyle in India and more so, with a child. That’s what i try to address with my content more and more. I started documenting more religiously from 2018 onwards. It has just been 3-3.5 years with me seriously being into it. It has been a great journey in the sense that I have made a lot of friends from the social media community, fellow people who like travelling, who like being wild and free. I have also met mothers who really on the verge of travel but don’t really know how to do it. This is a world that i have found, all thanks to social media and thanks to the community that we have created. So yeah, that has been my journey.”
When asked what is it like being a woman traveller and whether she found it scary, Deenaz said, “I would say that it has its own set of challenges. Like any other kind of travel, it is unique in its own way. I started travelling within India more in the beginning. After i got married, i started travelling with my husband a lot. We backpacked almost everywhere and that’s when i grew fond of budget travelling, finding your own way, taking risks and everything. That’s when i said, ‘Hey, let me take my own trips now’, so i started going on my own.”
“Yes, because there is always paranoia of what will happen. I never used to take too many risks as a child. I have a very loving and protective family. I don’t think my parents would have imagined that one day I would just leave with a rugsack somewhere. When that started happening, it was a feeling of joy mixed with fear for me. As the years went by and I started discovering myself more and more through travel, I realised that this is my passion and I really find myself more and more as I go on these solo trips. I get a chance to reconnect,” she added.
