By Juhi Bansal

While all of us grapple with the ‘new normal’ revelling in a few welcome changes and despising the others, the husband and I sat down to revisit our lives.

For as far as we can think back, we always wanted to get out- basically be nomads- staying in a place for a few months- eating and cooking the local food, learning the local culture and language and generally living in the moment. We have tried to imbibe this passion in our lives so far as much as we can holding down our current jobs (which we simply adore!) and also getting iy to go to school (or miss a large part of it 🙈) etc.
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The pandemic and the aftermath has made us see “remote” and the power it wields in a totally new light. While most of the people around us eye it with suspicion- it has made us see hope to live our dream! As we speak we are now thinking of travelling for long stretches while we continue to do our jobs remotely and iy learns online. It’s heartening to know there is light at the end of the tunnel, that we don’t have to wait for our retirement or take time off work for a few years to be able to do this. We have come to realize that work, play and learning are interspersed- we can’t compartmentalize them or switch off from one while we do the other. If we can’t separate the three why not make a winning combination!
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As K and I return to the drawing board to chart out a plan for a remote life, to turn our lives into a long road trip I only hope our employers and iy’s school will jump on board as well- after all if the pandemic has taught us one thing it is that there is simply nothing that can’t be done remotely (except travel- till we manage to perfect teleportation 😀)!

Life Update!!

I have NEVER had a one way ticket to any place as far as I can remember- not even for home. NEVER!
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And thats why this move is extra special! While the thought was taking shape in our minds- we went through a myriad of emotions, were even scared a little and almost dropped the plan several times. It’s not just packing clothes and toiletries- it’s packing iy’s entire school (there was one suitcase full of stuff!) and our offices, getting tests done, waiting for the results, searching for places to stay, breaking the news to parents, the dreadful flights and layover and waiting at the crowded airports and finally taking that leap of faith…it took a whole lot of might and industrial strength determination because we wanted to try this atleast once in our lifetime.
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So, here we are: remote living in one of our favourite places in India- Goaaahh.
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However, all three of us know for a fact that
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It’s NOT a holiday. We have extremely busy weekdays as we did in Ahmedabad with online school and work.
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We are not here to party. We will venture out a little in the evenings and on the weekends but being safe for our own selves and the locals is of utmost importance.
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We are not going to lose sight of “remote living”. Which means we’ll largely do what we did back home just in a new setting- which means cooking, working and working out etc
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We would like to explore the unexplored and soak in the local culture- BUT- not at the cost of safety. We will be mindful of the caveats set by locals.
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We will not get carried away by touristy places and things to do (we’ve done that during our past several trips to the city) but take it slow and enjoy the view.
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As of now we don’t have a return date in mind. We may realize tomorrow that this is not working out and come back immediately or stay put for weeks. We are ok with the uncertainty. We will live in the NOW
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I will try my best to regale you with stories from our #remotelife every now and then.

You can check out stories from our remote life in Goa here.