So..I MET a boy,

Who CHANGED my life!!!

I was 19, on a trek in the Himalayas. My first ever trip without my parents. (Convincing them was harder than the actual trek, btw.)😅

It was past midnight. I was lying on soft grass in the wilderness, tracing constellations with my fingers. The pollution-free night skies of Himachal Pradesh are genuinely a spectacle. And that night was about to CHANGE how I see the world entirely.

Because in that moment, someone came and lay down next to me.

His name was Jonas. (No, this is not a love story 😌. Don’t get too excited.)

He was from Germany. And as we started talking and exchanging life stories, I learned that he’d been travelling all over the world, from Europe to Australia to now India. He hadn’t been back home in over TWO YEARS.

BUT here’s what really SHOCKED ME: he was 19. NINETEEN. The SAME AGE as me.

My mind started swirling 🤯 19? How did his parents allow him? How does he have the money? Is he lying? How can I do this too? Is this even possible for me?

That conversation cracked something open in me 💥. Because up until that moment, I had been living inside a script I never even chose.

Go to school. Get good grades. Pick a safe college. Land a stable job. Work hard through your 20s. Take your one or two vacations a year. Get married by 30. Repeat. 🔁

I had absorbed this blueprint so completely that I never once stopped to question it. I just assumed it was the only way. The RIGHT way.

But here was Jonas. 19. SAME age as me. Two years into building a completely different life on his own terms 🌍.

That was the moment I realized: the script isn’t a rule. It’s just the only option you can see until something, or someone, EXPOSES you to another one ✨

And that made me wonder: how many other ways of living was I completely blind to, simply because I’d never been shown they existed? 👀

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What changed after that night

That one conversation, with a stranger I’d never see again, taught me the most important thing I know: exposure is everything.

Exposure to me, is simply this: Putting yourself in front of people, places, and experiences that are outside your normal world. Because you cannot want what you cannot imagine. And you cannot imagine what you’ve never been shown.🌍

This ONE conversation…one moment of exposure led me to taking these steps: I got part-time jobs at 19. I pitched hostels for stays. I built my Instagram while working full time. I would’ve done none of this, if I didn’t know that traveling as a way of life, was actually POSSIBLE! ✨

Look, the right place at the right time is REAL. But you have to put yourself there 🔥. Nobody stumbles into a life that looks different from the script. You build it…one uncomfortable room at a time 💪🏽

And this is probably the MOST important thing I will ever teach you in this newsletter: I want you to read what comes next slowly, and actually think about how you can bring this into your own life. 🧠

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Four ways I actively give myself exposure

1. Travel, but actually show up in it 🌍

Going to a new country and doing a curated tour, laying on the beach all day is a HOLIDAY 🌴. TRAVEL EXPOSURE is something else entirely ✨.

It’s staying somewhere long enough to talk to the person who LIVES there. Going on an adventure where you don’t know what to expect. Eating at the place with no English on the menu. Exposing yourself to ideas, cultures COMPLETELY different from your own!

In rural Japan, I stumbled into a community tie-dye event run by a group of elderly locals, most of them in their late 90s, some over 100. Their children had long moved to cities.This was just a group of very old people showing up for each other, dyeing fabric and laughing, because they understood something I hadn’t yet: that humans fundamentally need other humans. That COMMUNITY isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole point✨. I left that afternoon thinking about loneliness, aging, and what we actually owe each other in a way I never had before. And I would have never had that thought if I’d just stayed in Tokyo hotels and done the Nara deer park like everyone else. That’s what I mean by travel exposure😅.

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2. Talking to strangers 👀

When I quit Bain and knew I needed a remote job, I didn’t sit behind a laptop refreshing LinkedIn 💻.

I moved to GOA the hub of remote work in India at the time and spent every lunch hour at co-working spaces talking to as many people as I could 🤝. Speed networking. They didn’t know I was doing it 😅. It led me to getting five to six opportunities in THREE WEEKS 🚀.

One of them was a LinkedIn referral from someone I met over daal and rice 🍛. That’s how I got the job.

You go to the SOURCE. You talk to the PEOPLE. The opportunity doesn’t come to you 🙅🏽‍♀️.

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3. Reading things that challenge what you already believe 📚

Here’s the honest thing about how most of us consume media 👀: we pick things we already agree with. Books that confirm what we think. Podcasts that validate how we already see the world.

But REAL exposure in reading means picking up something that challenges your worldview even if it’s uncomfortable 📚.

I used to think saving money was EVERYTHING 💰 my upbringing taught me → spending = BAD, careless, how you get poor.. Saving = SAFE, becoming richer. Then I read Die With Zero which basically argues that hoarding money and waiting to spend it is its own kind of WASTE. It completely shifted how I think about money and experiences 🤯. I didn’t agree with everything. But I know MORE now. And knowing more is always better than staying comfortable in what you already believe ✨.

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4. Signing up for things you’re not sure you can finish 💪🏽

The version of yourself AFTER you do the HARD thing is never the same as the version before 🔥

I once spent weeks cycling through rural parts of South Korea..roads I didn’t know, a language I don’t speak, 70km a day with two bags 🚴🏽‍♀️. I had NEVER done something like this before. I went there dreading the trip, but came back feeling CONFIDENT not just about cycling, but about my own ability to COMMIT to hard things 💪🏽. That confidence has creeped it’s way into all areas of my life, be it doing hard things at work, having tough conversations in relationships or handling challenging situations while traveling!

You can’t think your way into that feeling 🧠. You have to EARN it by doing the thing

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What actually stops people

It’s not fear of failure. It’s something subtler than that.

We’re told in a hundred quiet ways that changing your mind is weakness. That if you believed something and you change it, you’re shaky, unreliable, inconsistent.

But that’s not what changing your mind after new exposure IS. That’s called growth. That’s called learning something you didn’t know before and letting it actually change you.

The problem is most of us are stuck inside the same rooms, the same feeds, the same conversations and we call it comfort. But really we’re just protecting a worldview we never chose to question.

Exposure breaks that. Deliberately.

Go somewhere you’ve never been 🌍. Talk to someone whose life looks nothing like yours 👀. Read the book that makes you uncomfortable 📚. Sign up for the thing you’re not sure you can finish 💪🏽. The right place is waiting, you just have to go find it 😌

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Unpacking Your Question 💌

Here’s the thing: if someone followed you for Japan and then suddenly gets a Meghalaya reel, the unfollow isn’t because India is “less interesting” 😭 It’s the EXPECTATION GAP. They signed up for one thing and got another. That’s a content strategy problem, not a destination problem.

So no, the solution is NOT “post less India” it’s: don’t be ONLY a destination account 👀

The creators who switch places without losing people are the ones whose audience follows THEM not the country. You build that by mixing in:

Your personal story + journey 🫶🏽 Why you travel + what this life actually looks like (including the unglamorous bits). This builds REAL loyalty.

Opinion + value content 💡 Packing tips. Things I wish I knew before going to X. How I plan trips. Hot takes about travel culture. None of this is location-dependent and all of it builds a following that’s attached to YOUR brain, not your passport stamps.

The “context” reel. When you’re about to switch destinations (esp. somewhere like Northeast India that your international audience may not recognise) give them a QUICK WHY + WHAT 👀✨ A “why I’m going here + what you don’t know yet” reel keeps people CURIOUS (not confused) and pulls in a whole new audience too 💥

Posting: Also don’t do 8 Japan reels then 8 Northeast reels back-to-back 😭 Interleave + spread it out. The shift should feel gradual.

The goal is: they should NEVER feel like they’re following a place. They should feel like they’re following YOU who just happens to be somewhere interesting right now 😌

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One Cool Thing I Did This Week 💕

So Jonas from the trek story, the whole reason I started this life was German. My partner, Julian is ALSO German. (Julian, not Jonas. But still full circle moment😂)

This week I flew to Germany to spend time with him and his family. And my journey there? A complete MESS. Flight delayed. Baggage came late. Missed my train entirely.

And then I ended up renting a car with two complete strangers to get to my final destination.

Turns out talking to strangers really does work out 😛 (when your gut says yes, of course!)

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Tell me what’s the most unexpected thing you’ve ever learned from a stranger?

Hit reply. I genuinely want to know 👇🏽

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That’s it for this week’s Unpacked…see you next Wednesday with something new to unpack 👋🏽

Lots of love & sunshine,

Aakanksha