🌍 The moment the interview cracked open my travel assumptions
I sat on a cracked plastic chair outside a roadside pani puri stall in Pushkar, Rajasthan—dust swirling, marigolds wilting in the afternoon heat—listening to Sebastian Modak explain why he’d just spent three days riding a local shuttle bus between Ajmer and Jodhpur instead of taking the express train. His voice was calm, unhurried. ‘The bus doesn’t run on a schedule,’ he said, wiping sweat from his temple with the edge of his cotton scarf. ‘It leaves when it’s full. And that delay? That’s where the stories begin.’ In that instant—how to interview a travel writer who practices what he preaches—I realized my own travel habits were built on convenience, not curiosity. I’d flown into India chasing ‘authenticity’ while booking every ride via app, every meal via aggregator, every interaction through curated tour scripts. Sebastian wasn’t offering advice. He was modeling a different kind of attention—one measured in shared silence, chai refills, and unscripted detours.
✈️ The setup: Why I went looking for him in the first place
Three months earlier, I’d been editing a series of budget travel guides for a nonprofit publishing collective. We’d just published a revised edition of India on ₹500 a Day, and Sebastian Modak’s name kept appearing—not as a source, but as a quiet counterpoint. His writing didn’t glorify backpacker hubs or list ‘top 10 hidden gems.’ Instead, he wrote about waiting at the Jaipur railway station for a cancelled mail train—and how that wait led to learning how to fold origami cranes from a retired schoolteacher who carried paper in his coat pocket. His work appeared in niche journals like Trains & Travails and Slow Routes Quarterly, never on mainstream lists. When our team debated whether to include a chapter on ‘intentional travel ethics,’ someone dropped his name. ‘He’s not a guru,’ they said. ‘He’s just someone who shows up, listens, and doesn’t rush the ending.’
I booked a flight to Delhi, then a sleeper bus to Ajmer—no flights, no premium bookings—on principle. My plan was simple: spend two weeks tracing routes Sebastian had written about, then meet him in Pushkar during the annual Camel Fair, where he’d agreed to a brief conversation. I carried only a notebook, a second-hand DSLR with one lens, and a laminated map marked with bus stops he’d mentioned in interviews. No itinerary beyond ‘be where the buses go.’
🗺️ The turning point: When the bus didn’t come—and everything changed
The first four days followed the script. I boarded the 7:15 a.m. bus from Ajmer to Pushkar. It arrived on time. I ate lunch at the same dhaba Sebastian described—dal makhani served in steel bowls, steam rising like breath in cool morning air. I even found the peepal tree where he’d sketched a family of langurs. Then came day five: the return leg. I waited at the Pushkar bus stand at 2:30 p.m., as scheduled. At 3:15, the conductor told me, ‘No bus today. Too many camels blocking the road near Nimbahera.’ He gestured vaguely westward, where dust clouds hung low over scrubland. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe evening. Who knows?’
I felt the familiar prickle of travel frustration—the tightness behind the eyes, the mental recalculating of budgets and deadlines. My phone battery dropped to 18%. No Wi-Fi. No nearby café with charging. Just heat, goats, and a line of men smoking beedis under a faded blue awning. I pulled out my notebook and started sketching the bus stand’s cracked cement floor. A man beside me—wearing a faded green kurta and sandals held together with twine—leaned over. ‘You drawing the cracks?’ he asked in Hindi. I nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Cracks tell more truth than walls.’ His name was Rajesh. He drove a milk tanker. He offered me a sip from his thermos—sweet, cardamom-scented chai, thick enough to coat the tongue. We sat in silence for twenty minutes, watching the light shift across the courtyard wall. When I finally asked if he knew Sebastian Modak, he smiled. ‘Ah. The man who asks about bus conductors before asking about temples.’
📸 The discovery: Not an interview—but something slower, deeper
Rajesh didn’t know where Sebastian was staying—but he knew which tea stall he frequented. ‘Near the old well. Where the women wash clothes. He sits there every afternoon, unless it rains.’ Rajesh walked me there, past laundry lines strung with saffron and indigo saris, past children chasing geese through narrow alleys slick with monsoon runoff. The stall was little more than a tarp stretched over bamboo poles, smoke curling from a blackened kettle. Sebastian sat cross-legged on a low stool, barefoot, talking with two elderly women sorting dried neem leaves. He looked up, recognized me from the photo I’d emailed, and gestured for me to join. No recorder. No prepared questions. Just chai poured into small clay cups—shorba cups, thin-walled and warm to the touch.
What followed wasn’t an interview. It was a three-hour conversation punctuated by pauses, shared snacks (roasted chickpeas, sprinkled with salt and cumin), and interruptions from neighbors bringing news: a goat had wandered into the temple compound; the well pump needed repair; the monsoon had arrived two days early in Bhilwara. Sebastian listened more than he spoke. When he did, he asked things like, ‘What do you call this season, when the earth smells like wet stone and memory?’ or ‘Who taught you to tie that knot in the rope?’ He didn’t take notes. He watched hands—how a woman folded laundry, how Rajesh adjusted his turban, how a boy balanced a stack of firewood on his head. Later, he told me: ‘Most travel writing mistakes happen when we treat people as sources, not co-authors. You don’t extract insight. You borrow time, and hope they let you keep a piece of it.’
That evening, he invited me to walk with him to the Pushkar Lake at dusk. We passed stalls selling brass bells and hand-stitched prayer flags. The air smelled of sandalwood incense and frying pakoras. He pointed out how the lake’s surface caught the last light—not in golden streaks, but in fractured, trembling shards. ‘That’s what slow attention does,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t smooth reality. It multiplies its edges.’
🚂 The journey continues: Riding buses, not checking schedules
I stayed in Pushkar for ten more days—not because I’d planned to, but because Rajesh offered me space in his cousin’s guesthouse, a single room with a tin roof and a view of the Aravalli hills. Sebastian left after two days, boarding a 5:45 p.m. bus to Udaipur—no ticket, no reservation. ‘I’ll pay when I board,’ he said, shrugging. ‘They know me. Or they will.’
I followed his rhythm. I stopped checking bus timetables. Instead, I learned to read the cues: the number of schoolchildren gathering at the stand meant the 4 p.m. bus was imminent; the arrival of vendors selling roasted corn signaled the evening shuttle would leave within thirty minutes; the absence of the usual tea vendor meant delays. I took the bus to Rajsamand—not for its palace, but because Sebastian mentioned its marble quarry workers’ lunch breaks. There, I sat beside a man named Devraj who carved marble slabs by hand. He showed me how to hold the chisel—not with force, but with wrist alignment and breath control. ‘Stone remembers pressure,’ he said. ‘So do people.’
One afternoon, waiting for a bus that never came, I helped load sacks of millet onto a flatbed truck bound for Bhilwara. The driver, a woman named Laxmi, drove barefoot, shifting gears with her toes. She told me about seasonal migration patterns—how families moved between districts depending on harvest cycles, not tourism calendars. ‘We don’t follow seasons,’ she said, adjusting her mirror with a flick of her wrist. ‘We follow hunger and rain.’ Her words rewired how I thought about ‘off-season’ travel—not as a discount opportunity, but as alignment with lived rhythm.
💡 Reflection: What happens when you stop collecting moments—and start holding them
Before meeting Sebastian, I believed travel depth came from accumulation: stamps, souvenirs, verified check-ins, ‘deep dive’ experiences booked in advance. What I learned in Pushkar wasn’t about rejecting those things—it was about recognizing their limits. Depth isn’t added; it’s uncovered. Like silt settling in water, it emerges only when motion slows enough for sediment to reveal itself.
I’d assumed ‘budget travel’ meant cutting costs—choosing cheaper hostels, skipping meals, avoiding entry fees. But Sebastian’s version of budgeting was different: it meant investing time instead of money. Trading speed for presence. Choosing buses over trains not to save ₹80, but to hear how a grandmother counted her grandchildren in Marwari dialect—or how a student rehearsed English phrases aloud, whispering them like prayers. His frugality wasn’t austerity. It was generosity—of attention, of patience, of unstructured hours.
The biggest shift wasn’t external. It was internal calibration. I stopped measuring travel success by distance covered or sights ticked off—and started measuring it by how often I noticed something twice: the same crack in the same wall, the same bird call at dawn and dusk, the same smile returning across different faces. Repetition, I realized, wasn’t boredom. It was recognition. And recognition was the first step toward relationship—not with places, but with patterns.
📝 Practical takeaways: How to apply this without needing an interview
You don’t need to find Sebastian Modak—or any travel writer—to practice this. You just need to adjust your posture. Here’s what changed for me, and what might shift for you:
- Transport isn’t transit—it’s terrain. Local buses, shared taxis, and unmarked vans aren’t delays. They’re living rooms on wheels. Sit near the window, not the aisle. Ask the conductor his name. Watch how passengers signal stops—not with buttons, but with eye contact or a tap on the roof. Note how luggage is stacked: baskets on top, grain sacks beneath, live chickens in wicker cages tucked beside the driver. These aren’t details. They’re grammar.
- Language barriers aren’t walls—they’re invitations to gesture, rhythm, and shared laughter. I couldn’t speak fluent Hindi, but I learned to ask ‘Kya naam hai?’ (What’s your name?) and ‘Kahan se aaye ho?’ (Where are you from?)—enough to open doors. More useful than vocabulary was mimicry: copying how elders folded their hands in greeting, how shopkeepers wrapped sweets in banana leaves, how children balanced water pots. Respect isn’t translated. It’s demonstrated.
- Eat where the queue forms—not where the sign glows. I stopped using food apps. Instead, I watched where laborers gathered at noon, where schoolkids bought snacks after class, where women carried stainless-steel tiffins to share with neighbors. Those spots rarely had English menus—or even menus at all. But they had consistency, community trust, and ingredients sourced within five kilometers. One dhaba in Merta City served only three dishes daily—roti, dal, and whatever vegetable was cheapest that morning. The owner, Sunita, changed the dal’s spice blend weekly based on what her sister grew. ‘Taste changes,’ she told me, stirring the pot with a wooden ladle. ‘So should the recipe.’
None of this required extra money. It required less rushing. Less certainty. More willingness to stand still long enough for a story to find you—not the other way around.
⭐ Conclusion: Travel isn’t about reaching destinations—it’s about arriving at attention
I left Pushkar on a Tuesday morning, boarding the 6:20 a.m. bus to Jodhpur. No photo of the bus. No geotag. Just a receipt stub, folded into my notebook beside Rajesh’s phone number and a sketch of the cracked bus stand floor. I didn’t feel like I’d ‘gotten’ anything from Sebastian Modak—not quotes, not contacts, not credentials. What I carried was quieter: the weight of a pause held long enough for meaning to settle. The taste of cardamom chai shared without agenda. The sound of a language I couldn’t speak, yet understood in the cadence of laughter.
Travel, I now see, isn’t a verb of acquisition—it’s a verb of orientation. You don’t collect places. You align yourself to them. And sometimes, the most valuable interview isn’t the one you prepare for. It’s the one that begins when you stop checking your watch and start noticing whose hand rests on the bus seat beside you.
