Content area
Full text
Around five years ago, Isa Khan used to successfully run a coaching institute. The Delhi-based economics teacher would travel every now and then and shoot videos of his destinations and put them up on his Instagram page. Life was good until 2020, when the pandemic struck, and his coaching institute shut down. He decided not to turn back and instead invest time in his passion—travelling and videography. Till then, he had garnered about 60,000 followers on the social media platform through his videos. During the initial months of the pandemic, he started creating videos from his previous travels and they went viral as people craved travel during the lockdown and binge-watched content around travel.
Two years later, as the pandemic is subsiding with sudden bouts of the virus every now and then, Khan has nearly half a million followers on Instagram. His page is full of ‘Reels’ on travel to beautiful locations, with soothing music in the backdrop—they almost have a calming effect on the audience and make them crave travel.
In one of his popular Reels shot on the snow-covered roads of Ladakh, Khan can be seen stepping out of his SUV and enjoying the snowfall as the popular song Pasoori plays in the backdrop. It is not like travel content was not in demand earlier, explains Khan, but “the reach has increased tremendously”. “Earlier such videos would go viral only a few times in a month. Now, it goes viral almost every time you put them up. Seeing the response and the demand, more and more users are creating travel content on Instagram and that is also another reason why it is gaining popularity,” he adds.
Pune-based pedadontist Dr Arushi Goyal, too, lives a double life—the other being the adventurous one as a traveller and explorer with her software engineer husband Prakhar Garg. They take time out to visit a new location every two months ever since they moved back to India from the US in 2019. Shortly after a year, the pandemic cancelled all her travel plans. So, she put up videos from her travels in the US to satisfy her travel urges. Gradually, they started visiting offbeat locations in Kashmir, Rajasthan, southern India, Madhya Pradesh, Thailand and Himachal Pradesh and created...