Parts Known : Part 0

I moved. Again. This is the fourth apartment I’ve moved to in the last 6 months, across two states. I’m not a nomad, or a serial traveler. Every time I moved, it was out of necessity, though it was by choice. It has been a trying six month period — graduating, starting what’s my first full time job, taking what was my first ‘travel’ break, getting my heart broken, making my parents visit a new country, and moving, lots of it. I’m in Seattle, with rains going about with their pitter patter on my new, clean windows (which isn’t quite the unusual setting for Seattle, I’ve learnt), in my new, clean apartment, I got thinking I should do something new.

Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

I recently started watching Anthony Bourdain’s Netflix series, Parts Unknown (yes yes that’s where the name of the post was obviously ripped off from) and have been fascinated by it. I thought to myself, unless something miraculous happens, I will likely never get to live a life of a story telling traveler like Tony does in the series. But I do explore the outdoors a fair amount. I don’t fly to Columbia to enjoy a stew, but I have taken a train from Chicago to San Francisco. I thought I have a fair share of pictures that I don’t really share anywhere, and ample time to make up stories that those pictures can corroborate. I also felt I should do something with serious discipline.

Through this post, and the series of posts that are to follow, I try to tell the stories of the parts of the world I have seen, parts of the world several others have been to, parts of the world thousands of people visit every year, parts of the world where people live and go to work in, parts of the world I have enough pictures of, parts of the world that don’t cost an arm and a leg for someone to visit over a long weekend, parts that are all too familiar but at the same time hold a lot of curiosity, parts that are not quite unknown.

By the time this is published, I will have written enough content to publish a few posts at the least. That’s the promise I make myself. A promise that will make me disciplined because, the stuff I write (as mediocre as it is compared to many, many wonderful things I have the fortune to read every day), I consider too precious to be left to die unshared. That’s the reward I get for being disciplined and writing enough, sharing the same. So read on, for a glimpse into what I’ve been seeing so far, what I’ll probably see in the coming years, and some gorgeous pictures that are all captured with the help of two devices in my possession — my phone, and my first camera.