nomadic living | On My Canvas

Under the Starry, Starry Skies of Chindi (Himachal Pradesh)

chindi himachal pradesh temple leopard devi goddess deodar and pine trees

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!

writing with hand papers with lot of ink writing ink pot computer

How to Edit a Memoir I am assuming you have the first draft of your memoir. I have written about writing the first draft of my travel memoir, sharing my experience. The main thing one needs to do to write the first draft is to write it. To not edit it, to not overthink it, …

lot of books neatly placed in rows in a book store display featuring travel memoir journeys beyond and within this photo is used as a feature image for article best books on how to write a book (1)

My Best Books on How to Write a Book: I Read These While Writing My 1st Travel Memoir

Not all the best books on how to write a book carry this tagline. So many titles, such as Bird by Bird or On Writing, fall directly into the list of best books about writing books. The other books for writers that I have dared to add here are those that have nurtured my growth as a human and a writer for over eight years. These titles aren’t promoted as the best books for writing, but by being so amazing and wholesome, they have slowly guided me along while I wrote my first book, one page, one day, and one breath at a time.

I had written about writers often drinking from the common wellspring of the greatest writing ever written in my favorite books from 2022. I have drunk the books listed here. While reading them, the book had become me, I was her, and everything else ceased to exist.

That afternoon when I learnt to bike and couldn’t believe what I was doing, or when I saw the Himalayas for the first time and was stunned by the pure mountains (more details in my book), and life had grown exponentially larger from what it had been in moments, these books have enlarged my life, too.

A lot of books have changed my life. The Little Prince and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance also belong to the same category. I am not including them here. This list of the best books on writing books is limited to those that directly helped me write better, especially travel and nonfiction, my travel memoir to be precise, made me see how to edit a nonfiction book, inspired me to write and keep pursuing art no matter the outcome, allowed me to feel what I was feeling as a lone writer at work might, and some are science books that enhanced my understanding of the human organism. To write about our species, we should understand the physics of our species.

Not a list is perfect, and not a list is suited to everyone. But this is mine. These titles run with my blood. They sit in my stomach. They shape each word my fingers type and my pen inks.

Enjoy my best books for creative writers. I hope that some of these storm you and cradle you as they have me.

Good luck!

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).

traveling from chennai to howrah train in background and female traveler in front with bags on her looks like a female traveler from India writer and blogger solo (1)

the author priyanka gupta writing the first draft of her travel memoir Journeys Beyond and Within with a computer in front of her and a window beyond

Writing the First Draft of My First Book, a Travel Memoir, in Pondicherry, Kolkata, and Siliguri

This post on writing the first draft is the second one in my larger effort to share the entire process of writing my first book, Journeys Beyond and Within…. I would suggest to first read: How I Started Writing My Travelogue, Journeys Beyond and Within….

The publisher needed book ideas, and when we had ideas, she needed chapter skeletons. So, all the possible chapter titles we could have in the book. This is for them to confirm if we synced over our understanding of the memoir. For two months we went back and forth, discussing what I could expect from the publisher and what they would need. Some major terms of the contract, such as no advance, 8.5% something royalty, etc., were told to me. I thought those are things we will discuss when we come to the book. For now, I have a book to write.

feature a girl holding a book called Journeys beyond and within surrounded by many copies of the book in a home. the book is a travel memoir the girl is the author of the book. book cover is deep green and has a beautiful image of the same woman sitting in a boat going into a mangrove forest

How Did I Get the Idea of Writing My 1st Book, a Travel Memoir, Journeys Beyond and Within…

My first book has come out. Today I want to talk about how I got the idea of writing a travel memoir while I was traveling with my partner in our car with all our stuff in it (now four years and counting).

Travel and personal growth book Journeys Beyond and Within Mockup in the forest with a river like path leading into the deeper woods symbolic of how our journeys lead us deeper into the world and ourselves along with the text available on Amazon worldwide written

on the road 1 drying clothes on rolling mountains near a road himachal pradesh

5 Years As a Digital Nomad in India: Behind The Scenes Table of Content [TOC] Introduction to My Digital Nomad Lifestyle January 5′ 2024 Bangalore Here I am in a hotel in Bangalore, writing about my nomad living and wondering why do I feel so cold and why am I so uninterested and unenthusiastic about everything. …

a woman sitting holding best book about travel to read in her hands in clay color dress the book title shows journeys beyond and within it is a green cover and in the background you can see plants

Honestly, this piece on the best travel books of all time began as a list of the books I loved in 2023. As the number of books about traveling surpassed other categories, I decided to dedicate an entire blog post to the best travelogues.

Here you will find all kinds of books about travel and adventure, including some on traveling within one’s room and another one on setting up a home in a foreign country. Some travel essays are as old as 1794 while others are from a couple of years ago. The list has solo walking adventures, solo mountaineering on horseback in the old-day Persia and current-day Iran, one travelogue is of a lone woman biker, another one of a tramp, and you will find even artists sharing their traveling experiences. I have also kept two of my best travel novels. They were so good that they belong here. Irrespective of the variety, all these books on travel have the same intention: to share the experience of exploring this wonderful, magical world and inspire us to open our senses to it.

I now have a handpicked list of the best books on writing too. These titles helped me write my first travel memoir, and some of the books here are delicious travel books to enjoy at any time.

~~I’m still to add many more books, but until then, enjoy.~~ This is a complete collection of the best travel literature I have ever read. Enjoy.

On Indian Roads Amidst the Second Wave of the Pandemic, Collective Feeling of Helplessness, Fundraisers, And Hope

Here in Himachal Pradesh

I’ve finally ended up in the Himalayan mountains of Himachal Pradesh, and I would live here for the next few months. This mountain excursion was always the plan for the summer and now as my fingers freeze, I wonder why I chose Himachal. Because I love the mountains or because I’m familiar with the Himalayas from my last four-month trip to Dharamshala in 2019?

In the Shimla area of the mountains where I’m at, summer is not well-known. Locals talk about hailstorms and snowfall even during the months of May to July when the plains of India scorch. During the summers, rains in the lower part of India are scarce but right now heavy rain falls outside my one-bedroom-and-hall house. I have kept the netted house door open by sticking a thick foot mat between the door and its frame. The temperature is no more than 11 degrees outside but when all the doors and windows are closed I stifle, a claustrophobia I picked up, perhaps, by growing up in a very open garden-facing independent house of my parents.

The whistles of a black kite which is hovering above me in the light blue sky are the only sounds that break my attention now and then. In front of me, a green parrot just flew by; I see more of them in the morning, when one after another they go, searching for grains and guavas and water and, maybe, more parrots. The coffee cuckoo, similar to the one that used to visit me in my previous apartment, also flew from one tree to another in the park in front of my writing studio.

I have stationed myself in one corner of this studio on a chatayi or as we say a mat nowadays, and from here I write my heart out. In this nomadic life, you can find me on and off in Bangalore, for I always come here to be with my partner, and thus I pen down many pieces from his vicinity with a temporary feeling of home.

Having spent more than four months now as a nomad, I have realized that you don’t have to own or rent an apartment to be at home. Neither are you always on the go even if you are living a nomadic life.

At the end of the day when I think about getting back home, I imagine a quiet place, where the bathroom taps do not drip and where I cannot hear the screeching tires or intruding honks, but I can only tune into the crickets singing songs to each other. Where I can lay on a bed or in a sleeping bag in a tent, preferably tucked away in the midst of trees, with a warm cup of tea and a book to read. From where I can make a phone call to my parents and family who worry if I disappear for even a day. I imagine a home that is a window into the world, or it has a window from where I can see the world, which I like to have at a distance. And that is all.

Such are my preferences these days. I started penning down this article to tell you about how my priorities shaped up the year 2018, and so on I go.