Meet this Indian digital creator couple who are now living out of a suitcase

Everyone has heard the saying that the best way to travel is to readmdashwell everyone but Hemani Chawda 30 and Sagar Patel 31 who have spent the last four months living out of a suitcaseChawda is a formerRJturnedtravelblogger from Raipur while Patel hails from Jhabua Madhya Pradesh and worked in the geographical information system fieldmdashldquoBasically people who help you make online mapsrdquo he says Since their wedding in December 2022 they had been planning their transition to fulltime travellers The couple finally bit the bullet gave up their rental apartment in Ahmedabad in December last year and dove in head firstEven before they met they had been traveling separately albeit with very different approaches ldquoSagarrsquos travel was more spiritual in the sense he would go on a lot of yatras I had been doing a lot of backpacking so our combined synergy worked out beautifullyrdquo says ChawdaSince Hemani Chawda and Sagar Patel gave up their rented flat in Ahmedabad home is wherever the next adventure takes them The duo have decided to make travel their fulltime profession for a year Four months into living the carefree life they say they have no regretsBoth were bit pretty bad by the travel bug and they were barely home for a week in a month The couple say they were paying around Rs 40000 in rent and another Rs 10000 went towards utility bills and domestic staff ldquoAs a result there was a lot of guilt so wersquod say letrsquos go home We were shelling out money for rent and other things which we felt were financial and mental burdens that were limiting us from experiencing liferdquo says ChawdaThey both wanted to get out of the habit of attachment to materialistic things pretty much from the start admits Patel For the first two years of their marriage they tried ldquosettling downrdquo renting an apartment together and buying things for it But all that did was prove to them that life wasnrsquot for them ldquoIt was not something we wanted But we had to convince our parents too We took them on trips and broke the news to them in phasesrdquo he recalls This started with the partial truth that the couple was moving in with the Patelrsquos parents in Madhya Pradesh and then easing into more frequent tripsCostwise it works out to pretty much the same as their rented apartment ldquoWe pay around the same amount at a place in Manali where wersquore regularsrdquo says PatelThe couple have given themselves a year to live out this experiment but now that they are a few months into it both chime in and say they hope it goes on beyond 2025ldquoItrsquos been good and we realise that it can be done well even monetarilyrdquo say Chawda and Patel who record their adventures on their Instagram handle wanderlust_himani which has over 33 lakh followers most of whom started following the duo after they headed into travel as a fulltime vocationHow do they do it They reach out to managers of properties they find interesting and volunteer their services in exchange for a comped stay or remunerationldquoSometimes I handle a placersquos social media clean it up and make it sharper Sometimes we just mail a bunch of places and tell them that we can come and review the place Most of them reply and negotiate some kind of a deal but you have to take the initiative and volunteer some kind of servicesrdquo says PatelBut compressing all of lifersquos needs into a suitcase is not easy We ask the couple whatrsquos the one thing in their suitcase they canrsquot do without ldquoNothingrdquo both say together after a few seconds ldquoI think except for our lights for shooting therersquos nothing we canrsquot do withoutrdquo says Chawda ldquoWhen we were at a recentseminar for creators I had just one pair of shoes but I just styled myself well and tried to look goodrdquo she gigglesPatel tells us that they are both learning how to shed some baggagemdashquite literallymdashby learning how to travel under 15 kg ldquoThatrsquos our next small goal How to travel with as little as possible and focus more on the experience not worrying about stuffrdquo he saysatOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params