HarPiyTravel

When Travel Is Life !

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Harmit, Piyush, and Aayansh chase, The golden light where highways bend. A shutter captures nature’s smile, On wild trails that never end.
  • Effective Strategies to Improve Your Sleep

    Effective Strategies to Improve Your Sleep

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    What do you do to improve your sleep?

    For perfect health, there are a few factors to maintain, and sleep is one of them.

    1. Nutrition
    2. Exercise
    3. Water intake
    4. Weight management
    5. Sleep

    If all 5 are taken care of, you will not have any health-related problems. In today’s social media era, with so many ways to keep us distracted and the kind of lifestyle this generation is living, it’s very hard to maintain a perfect sleep cycle.

    The rule of thumb is to get 7-8 hours of sleep daily, but it varies from person to person. For some people, 6 hours is enough, and for some, 9 hours will do the trick. There is good material available to understand the importance of quality sleep and cycles.

    I came across this book a few years back, which gives great insight into sleep deprivation, sleep banking, and different sleep cycles. If you don’t know, our bodies take a very long time to recover from lost sleep; it’s not as simple as sleeping more to compensate. Check this out:-

    Sleep It Does a Family Good: How Busy Families Can Overcome Sleep Deprivation

    To maintain my good sleep, I do the following:-

    1. I try to be in bed with my kid at 9 PM, and I am asleep till 10 PM. My wake-up time varies from 5AM to 6AM (not last that). This gives me roughly 7-8 hours of sleep. It’s more than enough for me.
    2. I don’t drink water too close to my sleep time so as not to disrupt my sleep.
    3. I stop using the cellphone 1 to 1.5 hours before I sleep. I still haven’t perfected this step, but I am working on it.
    4. I love reading, and bedtime is the best time to read. Most of my days end with reading the hardcovers. I own a Kindle, but I love reading physical books.
    5. My last meal is around 6PM, when I get home from the office. I take tea and my last meal of the day. Sometimes I feel hungry before bed, but I try to avoid a late-night meal. This is the new routine I adapted, and it’s working so well.
    6. Lastly, I keep my room very dark, with no light or lamps.

    This is my sleep score over 6 months. I use an iWatch, and most of the time, my sleep score is above 90.

    In the era we are living in, late-night work and parties are very common; we need discipline to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

    Happy Reading! Keep Traveling!!!

  • How to Overcome Negative Thoughts Effectively

    How to Overcome Negative Thoughts Effectively

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    What’s the best way to deal with negative thoughts?

    We can’t live without having negative thoughts. They are an integral part of human brain. When we feel low, when things are not going according to what we planned, when we are not able to achieve our goals, or when someone close to our heart is suffering, there is no way negative thoughts will not cross our minds.

    Now, having positivity in life is very important; the idea is to acknowledge those negative thoughts and then convert them into positive ones. How to do that is the most challenging part; it’s very easy to talk about being a positive person, but putting it into practice is not.

    I read lots of self-help books to encounter negativity and subscribed to many channels on WhatsApp and Instagram that provide positive quotes each day.

    • Daily Motivation channel on WhatsApp
    • Strongmindsetelite on Instagram
    • The_deep_thinker on Instagram

    These are the external sources that keep me motivated. Also, I make sure to be around positive-minded people; I try my best to avoid pessimists. The reason is that the kind of person you are surrounded by makes you.

    The last and most effective way to handle negative thoughts is to consider the worst-case scenario in that particular situation. Trust me, when you think that, you will realize it’s not that bad and can be overcome. That gives lots of positivity.

    For example, given the market situation in the USA, driven by advances in AI, economic impacts, and government policies, the job market is weak, and layoffs are becoming common each day. Now it’s very common to have negative thoughts about job security. Now I think about the worst that can happen to me: job loss. I know that if I lose my job, it will also create an opportunity for me to move to a new organization that could prove instrumental to my career. It might take some time to get a new job, but it can never be the case that I will be jobless for the rest of my life. Even if it happens, I can do something else; one thing is sure, I will get something.

    I always believe that everything happens for a reason, and that it is always for good. At that time, we felt bad about the situation, but later, once we moved on, we realized whatever happened was for the best.

    What are your thoughts on it? Do you agree with what I shared?

    Happy Reading! Keep Traveling!!!

  • Traveling Through Change: A Month of Growth

    Traveling Through Change: A Month of Growth

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    The month is ending today, and it has been a bittersweet one overall. Harmit got a new job and had to move to Oklahoma City, which is a 7-hour drive from Omaha. On her birthday, she was not with me, so I had to travel to OKC with my kid to celebrate. We are grateful for this job, but it also means taking our test, as we are living apart. But that’s how life is: you get something, you lose something. The idea is to embrace everything with positivity.

    Most of you know I love traveling, and this month is all about travel. I drove to OKC 3 times, and we also took a boys’ trip to Telluride that took 14 hours.

    My dad, who is a cancer patient, is unwell. So we had to travel to India unplanned. First, I had to drive 7 hours to reach OKC, and then the next day, a 3-hour drive to Dallas International Airport. The trip to India itself was a 26-hour journey through a 7-hour layover in Helsinki, Finland. It’s our longest travel ever; thankfully, Aayansh didn’t trouble us and was cooperative.

    Things are OK and in control. Throughout all these trips, I captured various shots. My favorite ones are the following:-

    Close-up of an orange lily flower with water droplets on its petals and green leaves in a pot
    Entrance tower of a Hindu temple with ornate carvings and large wooden doors
    Close-up of vibrant orange zinnia flowers with green leaves in the background
    Mountain landscape with dense pine trees and rocky cliffs under a blue sky with scattered clouds
    Curving mountain road with cars driving and dense pine forest under partly cloudy sky
    Clear turquoise lake with rocky mountain slopes and patches of snow under a bright blue sky
    A babbling mountain stream flows over rocks surrounded by green vegetation
    A highway with trucks driving under dark storm clouds before rain
    Mountain landscape with dense forest, red rock formations, and a small village along a winding road
    The magnificent, crystal-clear plunge pool at the base of the waterfall, carved over centuries into the rugged granite chasm, offers a cool oasis in the deep valley.
    Dark storm clouds with a heavy rain shaft over a landscape

    Which of these pictures is your favorite? what it reminds you?

    Happy Reading! Keep Traveling!!!

  • From Hating Veggies to Loving Them: A Journey

    From Hating Veggies to Loving Them: A Journey

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?

    I am in India right now at my uncle’s place, and we were discussing our childhood habits. During those conversations, my mom told me how I had changed over the years. Earlier, I hated veggies and would remove tomato and potato from curries, literally just touching the veggies with roti.

    Now I have no reservations at all; I can eat anything. I actually wonder: how can I not like potatoes in pulao and tomatoes in aloo-tamatar curry? Now that I know the importance of health and nutrition, I don’t mind eating anything good for my health.

    Few vegetables like Lauki, Torai were the worst one that used to bring tears to my eyes. I vaguely remember, I was so pissed of seeing such veggies in my plate and I used to take out “unwanted” ingredients from my curries.

    Now it’s my turn to see all this through my kid, who is 3.5 years old. He is just like me and doesn’t like any veggies; he will eat all kinds of junk food. I still feel he is a better version of me, though, as he likes broccoli, oats, and smoothies. So something better than nothing.

    Happy Reading! Keep traveling!!!

  • Transformative Books That Changed My Worldview

    Transformative Books That Changed My Worldview

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    What’s a piece of media (book, movie, song) that changed how you see the world?

    I am always fascinated by books. They carry so much wisdom and experience, and, amazingly, you get to read that compressed work in hours, days, or months. The movie is a great medium, too, but I always feel that reading a book is superior to watching its adaptation. The reason is that a book allows you to imagine the story from your own view, while a movie gives you someone else’s views, which has its own limitations.

    Books taught me a lot, and I am still learning. I am grateful to have this habit of reading. There is a famous quote by Frank Zappa: “So many books, so little time.” I totally feel it. There are so many books that changed my perception of the world.

    I used to read when I was in India, and then I got busy with life. When I came to the USA, my elder sister encouraged me to start reading again; she herself is a bookworm. Thanks to her, I started reading again, and the USA has a very powerful public library system. I wish we also had something similar in India. I am a frequent library member; other than that, I use the Libby app for digital checkouts, Kindle Unlimited, and Prime Reading.

    A few books that I want to mention here that changed my perspective on the world:-

    1. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
    2. Somnath by Acharya Chatursen
    3. Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
    4. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
    5. E=mc2: a biography of the World’s most famous equation by David Bodanis
    6. Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

    There are so many books like these that are shaping my life every day. Right now I am reading “The Gut by Payal Kothari”.

    What are you reading? Have you read any of the listed books?

    Happy reading! Keep traveling!!!