However different they might look from the exterior; internally, all human lives are travelling voyages in search of answers to the profound question of eternal sense and meaningful tranquillity.
All the wise people from the Indian dawn of consciousness have found their universal serenity by travelling to unknown places and discovering the truest wisdom of the ages–on life’s path we all are but companion travellers passionately journeying from one destination to another and sharing our existential experience with each other.
Abhishek Agarwal the Owner of the Indian Traveller–a leading YouTube Channel on Travel–has always been passionate about travelling, “As it is something that always gives me an ultimate sense of peace and freedom,” he reveals.
Freedom of Sharing Art and Creativity
Following the ancient Indian tradition of knowledge sharing, Abhishek, too, wished to share his travelling experience with aspiring and enthusiastic travellers by the way of an engaging audio-visual platform, finding the perfect one in the form of YouTube, which he says is surely an engrossing medium, especially in today’s world.
Abhishek shares, “The impact that YouTube has made on our lives is quite evident. Among all the great things YouTube offers, my favourite one is that it gives creators a platform to display their art and creativity at zero cost.”
There are creators of almost every genre on YouTube today and some of them have levelled up their skills so high that it almost matches the level of production of big-budgeted Bollywood or Hollywood movies. Watching great content is such an engaging and immersive experience that viewers feel they are a part of that video or a part of that YouTube family.
The Road Begins…
It was March 2021 when Abhishek decided that he’ll take a step ahead by making travel videos on YouTube. The goal was simply to spread the love for travelling that he has with like-minded people. “I published my first video on 1st April 2021 and now it’s been more than 16 months into this journey and I’m loving every bit of it,” says Abhishek.
Speaking about his unique channel Indian Traveller, Abhishek says that he is an avid travel vlogger, who makes travel videos sharing his experience about the places he visits. For him, the biggest uniqueness that his channel has is the connect that he has with his audience. He makes videos in a way that is easy to understand and engages his audience. “I think that’s the reason why people love and appreciate my videos and I’m really grateful for that,” mentions Abhishek.
Crossing the Challenges
Talking about the initial challenges he and his channel had to surmount in its early days, Abhishek reveals that starting a YouTube channel was a very challenging task in the beginning as his writing, editing and social skills were not up to the mark. He was still learning and figuring out things that worked on YouTube.
Also, he used to get a very handful of views on his early videos even 2-3 months after, which at times used to make him really sad and rethink his decision of whether to continue YouTube or not. Despite this Abhishek says, “Somehow I kept the motivation alive and just focused on polishing my skills and kept making better videos.”
Mastering the Craft
Regarding his changing his operations to create a new video, Abhishek says after about ten months of experience making YouTube videos he realised the importance of organising the process of making a video. Since then he is disciplined about his process. He sits in a quiet environment and thinks about the theme of the video. He adds, “Once I do that, I make a rough script for the kind of shots that I want, the opening shot, the closing shot, and some basic script for the video.”
Once he gets all of these thoroughly, that’s when the real challenge starts which is editing. It’s really important to pick up the right background music that matches the theme of the video, cut out the unwanted or less engaging clips and add some voiceovers in the video. Abhishek informs, “I focus a lot on voiceover and spend a lot of time writing the voiceover that adds to the quality of my video.’
Encountering the Pandemic Storm
Regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the YouTube platform and its users, Abhishek shares that COVID-19 has hit all very hard in every possible way but at the same time it has opened up a lot of new possibilities as well. How he looks at the impact of Covid-19 on the YouTube platform is that it has made the creators a lot more creative and enhanced their abilities to make content with limited resources.
He says, “Of course, travelling was one of the worst hit sectors because of COVID and travel vloggers suffered a lot but then we discovered new ways to diversify our content and still keep it engaging with our audience.”
Ways to Wisdom
Abhishek’s advice to the aspirants who want to enter the YouTube video platform is again apt. He says that anyone entering or planning to enter the YouTube platform as a creator must finalise their niche and work consistently on that.
“Sticking to your niche is so important as it tells both your audience and YouTube algorithm about the kind of content you create so that YouTube can recommend your videos to people who are interested in such content,” he says adding, “One more thing would be to always keep polishing your editing and video skills. No one is perfect in the beginning but if you keep learning your required skills with patience, you can even surprise yourself with your content.”
Celebrating the Milestones
“From the beginning of my channel till this time, I had two most notable achievements that are very close to my heart,” reveals Abhishek. One is when his channel got monetized in November 2021 and the other is when one of his videos touched three million views.
Getting his channel monetized felt so good to Abhishek as now he could make money out of his passion. Fast forward to May 2022, when he uploaded a video of ‘Travelling to Manali,’ and right after uploading it, the views took a flight. Within the first week, it touched 100K views and within two months the views touched three million.
“The response and the kind of love I got on this video was overwhelming and this one incident made me believe that sooner or later hard work really pays off on this platform,” feels Abhishek.
The Connecting Road Goes On and On…
Talking about the future of his channel, Abhishek is very optimistic about it. He says he doesn’t have any goal as to how many subscribers he wants to have or how much money he wants to make through this.
“But my goal is to build more connect with my audience and provide them content that adds value to their life. These days I’m learning the art of storytelling and very soon I’ll add an element of it in my videos in order to level up the quality and experience of my videos,” concludes Abhishek.
