Words by Imala

At a time where the whole world is connected through social media, we get to see so many interesting things. We see how people live their everyday lives. We see everything that people are willing to share about their lives through different platforms. One such platform is Instagram, which gives us an insight to their lives, their creativity, their journey through life conquering their dreams, captured through a camera lens. Giving us inspiration that anything is possible if we set our mind to it.

We are sure there are many amongst us who has a dream of traveling around the world and feel like it is going to be a huge expense. So, we sat down with an inspiring figure in our small nation of Maldives, known as Maldivotraveller. He shows us the beauty of the world we live in through his captures and he enlightened us with some tricks and to-do’s on how anyone can travel on a budget.

First, we started off with a little bit about who Maldivotraveller is. “My name is Hussain Anwar and I am from R.Inguriadhoo. As for my educational background I have a Diploma in Business Management, Human Resource Management and have graduated with a Bachelors in Business Management recently. I plan to study further in Project Management. Even though I am traveling a lot, I do not want to leave my studies to do that. We need to have a stable income source to travel and I believe we need to work harder if we want to travel more.”

Next, we asked about his inspiration on when he started traveling. Anwar replied, “Since I was a kid, it was a dream. I always see people traveling, and more so through social media’s like instagram. My biggest inspiration I would say is Mary & Jake and my favorite solo traveller would be Kriszti.”

From his travels, he told us about his best and worst experiences so far. “Well, I would have to say that the best and the worst would be the trip to Ladakh in India. For most people, India is best known for studies and medicals. I have travelled to India quite a number of times and one place I traveled to is a city called Ladakh. We hired a car with a driver and went to stay there for six days. When we went there it was -35 degree Celsius. The good part of the trip was we got to experience the cold, and the bad part was we didn’t get a hotel to stay there. So, we got a homestay for the night. The family we stayed with was very nice, they cooked for us and lit a bonfire since they do not have heaters there. After an hour the bonfire fizzled out, I went to bed wearing four jackets and five blankets and still I was freezing. The next morning, we rushed out to goto a lake on the other-side of the city and we were thankful for the heater in the car during the ride there. I have been to snow and yet have never experienced this level of coldness.” Anwar ended with a laugh.

While Anwar was showing his Ladakh captures we were in awe of how breathtaking his shots were and we were prompted to ask about the equipment he use for his captures. “Now I am using a Sony A6600, but I do take pictures from my iPhone 12 pro max as well. We can actually take good pictures from phone and I mostly use my phone for videos because it is really easy and convenient.”

Next, we asked Anwar what 5 things he would pack in his travel bags. “First thing would be passport, one time I actually had to go back home to collect it.” He replied with a grin. “Second would be my phone, and then my backpack, wallet, and lastly some clothes.”

We asked Anwar to pick one country from each of the 7 continents, he would like to travel to. Anwar replied, “from Africa it would be Zimbabwe, from Asia, Brunei, Europe would be Switzerland, from South America it would be Peru, and from North America it would be Mexico. I guess I will have to pick Australia for Australia and there are no countries in Antarctica.” When it comes to traveling, we inquired whether Anwar likes to travel alone or in a group, to which he had to say that, “it depends actually. Personally, I want to travel alone and explore. I want to start my journey alone, but if I meet people along the way I don’t mind exploring with them.”

As for his recently launched blog, Anwar explained how he came up with the idea and how the works were carried out in-order to launch it just the way he had envisioned. “It was a two-year project which I had initially planned to launch on my birthday last year, but due to a lot of technicalities I was unable to launch it then. My main reason to create a blog was because there were only a few people who travel continuously. When I first started, the numbers were few but the same cannot be said for now. Some people view traveling as a big waste. My parents had the same view too, but I actually managed to change it. I really wanted to use my travel blog to give out tips on budget traveling and give full details about my trips. For this year, I am mainly focused on the islands that we can travel to on a cheap budget. To blog and show everyone that traveling to the islands is no less than traveling out of country. That we can explore the beauty within our own country, something I myself only realized after this pandemic started and a lot of my travel plans had to be canceled. It is all about how you choose to travel.”

We also questioned Anwar about his favorite country amongst the countries he has traveled to so far. His answer was, “Turkey and India. Turkey has a lot of historical and cultural places and my favorite region would be Cappadocia, where a lot of historical landmarks are located. India is a different place that has many places worth checking out.”

As for his future plans Anwar replied that, “I do have a plan for 2022, but I am not sure where I will be going yet. My plan is to choose one country from Asia to travel on a budget. I just to travel for one month with no plans on where I would be heading next. My itinerary would all depend on the time and people who I would meet along the way during that one month. Insha’Allah, I will be trying to start a YouTube channel whilst traveling next year as well.”

In regard to the community feedback, Anwar responded that he does get positive and negative feedback as we are living a tiny community. “I am not showing that its expensive to travel because it is not expensive at all. It could cost a lot for the ticket but its not expensive at all to travel within a country if you are able to budget your trip, and that is what I would like to convey to our community through my blog and YouTube channel in the future.”

On that note we wish Anwar all the best for his future ventures and wish to see him breaking the stigma around traveling because traveling enriches our mind and soul.