When Navdeep says we’re part of the Tech Generation, he’s not kidding. We not only blog as a couple, we even met online. A little more than three years ago, I was a reporter at People magazine, toiling away on the frontlines of celeb culture (and pursuing my masters in screenwriting and South Asian studies). Navdeep had just returned from two years teaching English in China and was pursuing his MFA creative writing in Fresno.
It seems super-unlikely that our paths would ever have crossed.
Enter the Internet. Bored with the shallow New York scene, I very reluctantly joined IndianDating.com at the suggestion of a friend. Naturally, I wasn’t interested in any of the Indian boys the site had to offer in New York—or even the entire Eastern seaboard. Instead, I came across Navdeep’s profile and laughed out loud—something about swimming the entire length of his swimming pool and being a hardcore traveler. (Little did I know!) So I forwarded my profile to him, asking him about life in L.A. And he responded immediately—by calling me a cheapass for not paying to be a member of the site and announcing that there was more to California than just L.A. (Yeah, I still don’t get that!) Thus began a whirlwind, cross-country romance.
Though we were more than three thousand miles apart, we bonded over endless emails pondering everything from travel to tongue piercings. Within six months, we were a done deal, racking up frequent flyer miles monthly. And we were so smitten, we got married three times for good measure. We wed for the first time first time at the Hollywood Wedding Chapel during a road trip to Vegas in May ’05. But we also had the proper Indian wedding—both Sikh and Hindu ceremonies—last July in my home state of New Jersey. Then we were off on a ten-day culinary honeymoon in charming Puebla, Mexico.
But work kept us doing long distance for a while even after all those weddings. So in April, when TeenPeople.com finally folded (RIP), I headed to Fresno to be with Navdeep, who was busy teaching college English. We had long kicked around the idea of traveling, but the timing was never right. (Read: why yes, I am a workaholic.) Now, I was full-time freelance (and admittedly bad at it) and he could easily take a semester off. What was there to stop us? Besides, as Navdeep always reminds me, if you want to be a travel writer, you’ve got to travel.
We’re toting along our cameras so we can hone our skills and share with you our own unique take on the world—starting with India. Hope you enjoy the ride!
[…] around with one dusty backpack, as opposed to nice, clean, colorful little rolling bags. In 2007, we decided to quit our incredibly stable jobs in freelance writing and adjunct teaching to go travel through India for […]