Author Profile: Akil Kumar Aswatha Narayana

Now this is the most I’ve spent in the city of Dunedin and I really wish I had more time here, despite being around for a week or so. I remember coming here for a few days about 5 years ago, of which one of the days ended up being a one-dayer to Queenstown & back. And the remaining couple of days ended up being very touristy as I was here with family back...   view more

Who hasn’t heard of the Mysore Palace or the Mysore Zoo or the Mysore Dusserah? For most South Indians, if not all, these are places/events of interest that they would’ve grown up hearing about and/or experiencing it. For a lot of Bangaloreans, Mysore was like a summer holiday destination almost every school holiday season. The last time I visited Mysore for travel purposes was nearly three decades...   view more

Having been to Malaysia before where I had only covered Kuala Lumpur in the past, I wanted to go to the country again after my month long workation in Vietnam & Thailand was coming to an end. With Langkawi in the proximity, I picked the destination so I could relax for sometime before deciding which direction to head further. And woah ! Langkawi turned out to be more awesome than what I thought it’d be and I couldn’t have chosen a better place to unwind and gather my travel thoughts...   view more

When I couldn’t find a train from Bucharest to Brasov due to the festive season, not only did it give me a chance to extend my stay in Romania but also made me alter my plan slightly to fit another country to my list. Moldova – Europe’s least visited country. It felt like an unplanned adventure, going into a country I knew so little about, but so have been all of my solo travels around the world. It wasn’t anything...   view more

I arrived in Sofia on an overnight bus from Bucharest Romania, exhausted but eager to see what the city had to offer. Exhausted because prior to boarding the bus at Bucharest I was on another 7hr bus ride from Chisinau Moldova, followed by a tram, metro & then a bus ride to the boarding point. Finally after 24hrs since I started from Moldova, as the bus rolled into the Sofia station in the early morning light, I wasn’t quite sure what to...   view more

During my entire Northeast Asia trip, the one country I was most excited about was South Korea. With K-pop, K-dramas, and Korean culture taking the world by storm, I was genuinely intrigued to discover what this dynamic country had in store for me. But did it live up to all the hype? Did I experience the best of what I was eagerly waiting for? Read on to find...   view more

When I first slotted Taiwan into my travel itinerary, it was, quite honestly, an impulse decision. I wasn’t chasing world-famous temples, or mapping out night markets. I didn’t have a meticulously planned list of “must-sees” or “top eats.” The only thing drawing me to Taiwan—more specifically to Taipei—was Taipei...   view more

YEREVAN wasn’t planned. It just happened to fall into my 2.5-month long solo journey across West Asia, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. By the time I rolled into Armenia’s capital, I had already crossed countries, borders, and cultures, but Yerevan left its own mark in a way I hadn’t...   view more

As a solo traveler determined to visit every country on the planet, there’s something uniquely rewarding about exploring the smallest countries in the world. Of Europe’s 10 tiniest nations, I’ve already checked off Vatican City (the world’s smallest), Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. That leaves only San Marino and Kosovo as the remaining gems on my...   view more

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from traveling solo, it’s this: the best journeys begin with a bit of chaos and end with a lot of magic. My Taiwan adventure kicked off with both. I flew in from Macau expecting a smooth, direct landing in Kaohsiung. But nope—our plane had other ideas. Turns out Kaohsiung airport was too busy to let us land, and we didn’t have enough fuel to keep doing lazy loops in the...   view more

Now when you hear someone’s travelling in India, you don’t think they’d be heading to Bijapur (now known as Vijayapura) as a tourist destination, do you? Yes the city has numerous monuments & works of art from over 500years ago and yes the city has the world famous Gol Gumbaz, a monument that was built nearly 500years ago, as a tomb for Mohammed Adil Shah but given the publicity it has, not even a lot of locals within the state or the country know about the place or its history as much as...   view more

Hong Kong wasn’t just a stopover, it was the destination. The first pitstop in my 2 month long North East Asian workation. I had carved out five full days in Hong Kong before heading to Macau, and somewhere between my first steaming basket of dim sum and my last moonlit walk along Victoria Harbour, the city completely stole my heart. Super expensive, but it still did heart stealing for...   view more

After a whirlwind week in Hong Kong during my two-month North East Asia working holiday — days that blurred into a vibrant mix of skyline strolls, endless dim sum, and late-night harbor views — I felt the itch to move again. The next stop was just across the water, but promised to be a world apart: Macau – The Las Vegas of Asia,...   view more

When I finally stepped off the bullet train, I carried a very specific image in my mind - one painted by history books and documentaries. I expected a quiet, heavy place, frozen in time, carrying the weight of its past. What greeted me instead was a city that had completely reinvented itself. Modern streets, sleek trams, a lively town center, and a transport network that made getting around effortless - Hiroshima felt futuristic, full of energy and promise. It wasn’t just a city that had...   view more

I’ve always gravitated toward smaller cities, and within just a few hours, Porto began to resonate with me in a way that felt effortless. That evening, I kept things simple—just a slow walk through softly lit streets, Christmas decorations glowing around every corner, and a quiet sense of contentment settling in. It was the perfect, unhurried...   view more

My journey to Andorra began with an early morning bus ride from Barcelona, for which I had to be up by 4am and get ready to take the 6am bus. I started from the hostel wandering through the quiet alleys of the Gothic Quarter on my way to the bus station, where the stillness of the morning seemed to match my own pensive mood. With every step, I felt a mix of excitement and high energy, though a bit sleepy —a familiar sensation for me as a solo traveler embarking on a ride to a new...   view more

After having travelled to various UNESCO world heritage sites around the world, little did I know that I was only a few hours of drive away from one of India’s most popular & prominent UNESCO heritage site of Hampi & its historical ruins. The last time I remember visiting Hampi was when I was around 8 or 10yrs old and I had no idea of what it was like back then. So when I looked up for Hampi I just coaxed my brother to go on a road trip from Bangalore to this historical town and he readily...   view more