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‘Well, people die through the year, so that helps business when it’s off-season’, my boatman explained. I chuckled - whether you are dead or alive, Varanasi will welcome you with open arms. You visit Varanasi to find moksha - eternal peace. My journey had been less than peaceful. I arrived at 2 in the morning, on a train that was late by 22 hours. My phone doesn’t have the best reception, and the hotel isn’t returning my calls. I shoo away stray dogs, jump over garbage and cow-dung to find my hotel. It would make more sense to find another hotel, but I persist. If my budgets go out of hand, it’ll affect my next trip. Plus I’ve already paid for the hotel. Eventually I find the hotel that metaphorically shut its doors on me. Finding a balance between expenses and experiences is hard when you’re on the road, but my friends make it seem easy. They max their Credit Cards. Ask their parents to pitch in. Some even quit jobs to travel. And, while I admire their passion, they also make me envious. I hail from a modest middle-class family. I have been financially independent since I was 20. If I ask parents to fund my trip to the Everest, they would ask me to climb a mountain closer to home. I want to travel often, but I don’t have deep pockets. The sun shines brightly on the bank of River Ganga. The local passengers on a ferry next to me barely look up from their mobiles. Barbers, priests, hawkers, and pilgrims start arriving at the riverbank. A portrait of peace and quiet transforms into a carnival of colours and chaos. Each shrine on the riverbank is doing its own round of morning prayers. It feels like I’m in the middle of a very badly organised music festival. A peddler even tries to sell me some pot. Varanasi is now as noisy as a Mumbai railway station. I feel I’ve arrived at a destination when it begins to feel like home. I realise travel isn’t about seeing new places across the world. It’s about seeing the world with new eyes. Back home, I have a tedious 3-hour commute, but I tooI barely look up from my Kindle or phone. I too am a passenger on a ferry ignoring the sunshine. I decide then and there to travel even when I am at home.To novel in the routine. To observe how humans interact with each other, and their surroundings. I know now that I’ll travel… Even when I commute to work.