travel | On My Canvas

In Izmir (Turkey), a City Where The Sea Never Leaves You

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Things To Do in Izmir, Turkey (If You Could Ever Leave the Seaside)

On Sunday, my first day in Izmir, I was awake at 8:45 am. I went to the toilet quickly, showered, and got ready. I scanned the receipts from Dubai to send to my travel insurance company (you can read the story in the linked piece). Everyone in the house, which meant my host Mohammed, his cat, and his friend, whom I hadn’t met, were still asleep.

Mohammed probably woke up at 10 but stayed in bed for another hour and eventually came to ask me if I would like Turkish coffee. I was scanning documents, which I continued to do after coffee. Over that big cup of delicious Turkish coffee, we talked. He said he would go to the market to get some things for breakfast. I offered to go too, but I think he felt it would be a waste of time. Before heading out, he took out a few tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, and a cucumber from the fridge. I told him I would chop the vegetables.

Mohamed went to the supermarket, and I continued to put together the insurance things. When he returned, I chopped the tomatoes and mushrooms, and he cooked them with eggs. He had also brought halloumi cheese, which he grilled. He heated the Turkish bread bibit in a sandwich press and made two big cups of tea, too.

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This is How My Solo Trip Began

So this is how the nightmare began. I shouldn’t say that, though. Many people must have had it much worse.

I was in Dubai at my friend Haninder’s house, working on my newsletter, when I read a message from him. He had gone out.

“Heard the interceptions? Loud blasts?”

What blasts?

“Not really? You did?” As if that wasn’t obvious.

I checked the news.

Dubai airspace shut down. Flights canceled. Iranian missiles and drones hitting UAE. UAE intercepting the Iranian air attacks. Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan bombed as well.

NO. NO NO.

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Hanging out with villagers, Wandering Around Apple Farms, Climbing Into Pine Forests, and Drinking Wine under Starry Skies in Chindi, Himachal Pradesh

The government guesthouse in Chindi, Himachal Pradesh, was located on the brow of a hill. Below the guesthouse and further ahead and behind it, the village sprawled. We checked in at two pm. Our room was Set 1.

The PWD (Public Works Department) guesthouse caretakers hadn’t received a call from their superintendent regarding our booking. They thought there was no booking. All the staff, all men, were sitting on fixed wooden chairs that seemed to have been carved out of tree trunks right at their place under a giant Chinar tree.

trees of chindi pwd government guesthouse chindi himachal pradesh giant tree — The sycamores!

a girl, the author of the article, priyanka gupta holding a blue umbrella in her hands looking up smiling standing under open sky under coconut trees water visible behind her

What Does it Mean to be Blogging for Eight Years?

For eight years, I haven’t woken up a day thinking I had nothing to do. You must have heard of, “Hey, my project is over. We are celebrating. Now onto new things!” I could never say this. I can exclaim these words after publishing every blog post, but I don’t feel like it. My project is understanding and documenting the act of being alive, and it is never over, until it is over.

I also always have more than enough to write because for almost five years my partner, Sagar, and I have been living nomadically in India. We don’t have a home, our stuff is in our car, Scooby, and we have been traveling slowly. In June 2025, we parked Scooby at Sagar’s parents’ home in North India. Now we have been traveling with our backpacks (Here are my best travel resources).

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the author standing in beautiful mountains with arms open embracing her long writing and travel journey

Seven Years as a Full-Time Writer, four of which I have spent on the road

On My Canvas turned seven in August. I couldn’t publish a post on its anniversary. As I’ve repeated in my newsletter Looking Inwards, a big project kept me busy. Soon that project will be out in the world and see the sun. Until then, I’m here to write about these seven years of full-time writing.

Along with the blog, I have freelanced, written poems, penned down stories, and so on. I’ve been on the road for four of those years, with all my things in the car. Yeah, my partner has been with me, too. I’m sure you have read about our itinerant journey in this massive post.

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Keeping Our Eyes Open to the Wonders of the World At times, we look around us, and everything moving or even inanimate strikes us as beautiful. Travel, for sure, helps me appreciate the new and the old. But it also opens my eyes to things I might have ignored otherwise. Though I lived for years …

mobile tandoor for peanuts in siliguri city west bengal

Though I stayed in Siliguri, a city in West Bengal, for more than two months, I have not written a blog post on it, yet. The reason could be that I was busy with a creative writing project writing my book that took all my time. I was not venturing out a lot either. With …

a boat parked at the edge of water used as a feature image for six years of my personal growth and travel blog on my canvas

Six Years of My Personal Growth and Travel Blog On My Canvas The past six years have been important to me in many ways. In them, I not only wrote on this blog and brought it to where it is today: an infinite source of inspiration, hope, and ideas for me and, hopefully, a peaceful, …

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I wrote down these learnings over the year in scattered forms, mostly in my weekly newsletter Looking Inwards. But I am putting them together here to have them in one place.

Please relish.

Lessons 2022 Taught Me

# We can run as fast as we like. But life is always right there. Running behind. Chasing us. In this race we cannot win. For we are life itself, and she is us.

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While no one can deny that the climate crisis is here, the nature leftover in the corners it is squeezed into is as real, extraordinary, and soul-warming as ever. Some of the animals, forests, and landscapes I saw this year while traveling within India and through Vietnam looked so ethereal, as if someone had painted those scenes. They were moving pieces of art.

Every moment of my life I wonder how we are even here. The perfection of it all fills me with unprecedented joy. All the big events we plan, prepare, and wait for – graduation, foreign trips, marriages, potlucks, get-togethers, movie nights – happen soon and finish. After all the merriment, we are left with the loneliness of our being. But if we would look around, smell the air, and sit in the grass we would see life oozing out of every grain of soil, stuck to the bark of a tree, or finding its way inside through the little gaps left in the window. Once we are with nature, we are never alone. Once we are ready to be charmed by this wellspring of magic – and it is armed with enough to dazzle us – we would not be bored or think that life is ordinary ever again (this is only one of the life lessons 2022 taught me).

There is much to see, amaze at, and protect. I want to end the year with hope by sharing these photographs from 2022 that show nature defying climate change and not only surviving but also thriving in its own home. If we still let it be, it will recover all that is lost, with just a little consideration, help, and love from us.

Hoping to inspire that love.

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Adventures in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

When I went to Vietnam in 2016, I found myself in a green paddy-filled country. Under the shadows of their bamboo hats, locals flitted between places unhindered by the large bamboo baskets they carried. Birds sang from their cages hung on balconies. Streets were lined with stalls selling soup, grilled meat skewers, rice paper rolls, and fruits.

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Coorg’s Laid-Back Stuart Hill in Photos. Karnataka, India

I’ve written so much about our month on Stuart Hill in Madikeri town of Karnataka (in the linked memoir) that I’ve reserved this piece for photographs of the hill and Madikeri town.