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Home » How I Became A Self Taught Travel Film Maker: Tanya Khanijow (Transcript)

How I Became A Self Taught Travel Film Maker: Tanya Khanijow (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Travel Vlogger Tanya Khanijow’s talk titled “How I Became A Self Taught Travel Film Maker” at TEDxCVS 2021 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everybody, this is honestly a little awkward for me right now, because this is my second time on a TEDx stage. And if I’m being honest, the last time I was on this stage, I bombed a little bit because of the blinding lights and everything. And now I can see the audience, so wow, good for me. Anyway, so I’m Tanya Khanijow, and I have a very interesting job that I want to talk to you about today.

My Job as a Travel Filmmaker

What I do is I travel for a living. And whenever I’m on my trip, I record my journey and my experience. And when I come back, I edit them out into a mini web series for YouTube. And honestly, I have no umbrella company that sponsors me, and I have no media house that employs me. And for that matter, I did not even have a mentor when I got started on creating this job. I say created because I practically created it for myself. I’m a YouTuber, and with just over 100 YouTube videos, I’m at a 500,000 subscriber number. And today I’m here to talk to you about how I became a self-taught travel filmmaker.

Adapting to Change in My Early Life

So whenever I think about how I got started with doing this, I always think of my early life because when I was in my early childhood, not in my early childhood actually, my family, I’m from the army background, I was born in an army family. And what that meant was that I used to shift my location almost every two years, because my family moved often. And I had to put myself in that uncomfortable situation of leaving my familiar surroundings behind and leaving my friends behind every two years. And also, that meant that I had to adapt very quickly to a changing environment, basically. That is what my early childhood did to me.

Finding Independence and Adventure in College

I studied electrical engineering at Delhi Technological University. And for four years of my college life, I lived a hostel life. And when I found my newfound independence in college, the one thing that I gravitated to very easily was travel, because I wanted an escape from my burdensome 9-to-5 college life. So I very naturally gravitated towards travelling. That’s me when I was just 19 years old. And I used to chase adventures.

Travelling on a Shoestring Budget

And I used to do it in every capacity possible, whether it was taking local trains or really shoddy-looking general coaches or buses, going over winding roads in hilltops, mountaintops with a very lurching stomach, because I had a very bad indigestion problem on the mountain roads, which I eventually got over. But whatever means came my way, I used to travel on a very shoestring budget. And I used to do it with a very meagre college allowance. And you know what travelling at a young age does to you? It turns you into a life hacker.

Becoming a Life Hacker Through Travel

Now, what do I mean by a life hacker? You basically learn how to move past every challenge that life throws at you in a very short span of life, whether you lose your tickets or you get lost somewhere. That had happened to me when I was travelling in Africa last year. But life teaches you in a very short span of time how to better adapt to different situations. And you also learn how to manage in every situation possible.

A Memorable Trip to the Mahakumbh

This brings me to a very interesting story, by the way. When I was around 20 years old, back in 2013-14, I wanted to visit the Mahakumbh in Allahabad. I think it was 2014. And what I did was, I left from my hostel at night and I went to the train station to board a train without a ticket. And what that meant was that I had to board a general coach train. And what I did not know was that during the Mahakumbh, this train, the set train, is packed like a can of sardines.

When I entered into the coach, there was no space to stand, much less sit. But eventually through the night, because it was an overnight journey, I found a spot on the train and I was sitting. But also, my shoes was a place for a woman who was travelling with her family to sleep on. She made my shoes into a pillow and I had no space to move my legs. So for a couple of hours throughout the night, my legs were entirely cramped and I couldn’t move at all because I wanted to go to the Mahakumbh in Allahabad and travel by myself at a very young age.

The Popularity of Travel

I eventually reached this and clicked a lot of photos, became a little bit of a photojournalist and that is when my interest in travelling for real began when I was back in college. Now this brings me to another point that I am not the only person who travels by any means. There are a lot of people who travel. In fact, yesterday morning, after many, many moons, I visited Facebook and what I saw was that most of my friends right now, whether from my college or from my work life, were travelling even right now during a pandemic. And I saw a lot of their stories and I realised, yeah, I am not the only person who travels.

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Turning Travel Into an Opportunity

But I wanted to turn it into an opportunity. I wanted to take all of my life experiences, my lessons, my anecdotes, my travel life and turn it into an opportunity from the very onset.