“If you want to figure out what you want to do, you should be clear about what you don’t want to do”- Anurag Mallick
On our show today, we have Anurag Mallick, Founder Director of Red Scarab Travel & Media in conversation with our host Ashutosh Garg. In the interview, Anurag shares his fascinating experiences of traveling, working in Bollywood, media, advertising, and much more. He tells us about the three key milestones in life, leaving the advertising industry and writing full-time as a travel writer was one of them. Anurag has done it all, writing lyrics for an indie band, working on a film in Bollywood, as a director and an actor, authoring several books, writing for many major travel publishings, and now he runs his own travel company which does a wide range of work across many industries. Anurag tells us how he fell in love with traveling, he shares many interesting anecdotes from when he was traveling in Ladakh, which as he claims is his favorite place to visit in India. He then tells us how travel writing is different from the other forms of writing. He also shares about his stint in the film industry as an assistant director and a short role as an actor. He has had an extraordinary journey, listen to the interview to find more!
Anurag Mallick, Founder, Red Scarab Travel & Media
Profile
Born in Darbhanga, schooled and raised in Jamshedpur, college in Delhi, a brief stint in Mumbai and loosely based in Bangalore – Anurag is a nomad at heart and a writer by choice. His eclectic media career spans advertising, a rock band, radio stations, film and travel/food writing in his current avatar. After dropping out of business school, he joined advertising and spent four years at Leo Burnett, crafting copy for brands like Coca-Cola and Reebok. In between, he squeezed in a gap year, going AWOL as he trekked through the Parvati Valley, meditated with monks in a Buddhist monastery in Ladakh and hitchhiked from Leh to Manali in a truck before the passes closed for winter. Anurag rode the first dot com wave in Bangalore – briefly at Indya.com and then Oyeindia.com, where he developed a site on offbeat budget travel in India, covering most of his journeys on a 250 cc Yezdi Roadking. He has trekked in the Himalayas, taken a holy dip at two Maha Kumbh Melas, walked with kanwariyas at the Shravan Mela and jumped off a 160 m high bridge in Nepal to experience the world’s highest canyon swing. One of India’s leading travel writers, his work has appeared in top publications like Conde Nast Traveller, Outlook Traveller, National Geographic Traveller, Lonely Planet, Deccan Herald, The New Indian Express, The Hindu, The Times of India, Time Out Explorer, Discover India and India Perspectives, the magazine of the MEA, among others. He has contributed to several Outlook Traveller guides like ‘52 Weekend Breaks from Bangalore’, ‘100 Holidays in the Hills’, ‘Trekking Guide to India’, and co-authored state guides on Karnataka, Odisha and Gujarat with his wife Priya Ganapathy. He’s also co-written books on Kerala and Karnataka for Stark World Publishing and the Michelin Green Guide to Tamil Nadu and the Golden Triangle, the 10th edition of the Rough Guide to India and South India & Kerala Guide besides a cookbook for the USDA – Southern Comfort: Southern American Soul Food. He has co-scripted four documentary films for Andaman Tourism, hosted by Tom Alter. Anurag is also part of Wild World India, a nature/wildlife tour company (voted 100 Best Traveller Outfitters on Earth by National Geographic Traveller 2009) and has visited most of India’s wildlife parks.
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