In Mumbai, Everyone Thought I Was a Local. Here’s How I Became One.

When Afar editorial director Sarika Bansal was 22, she moved to Mumbai. As you’ll hear in her Travel Tale this week, she grew up in New York and visited India (where her parents were born) frequently. Yet the visits often felt cloistered. But many years later in Mumbai, she didn’t have to worry about meeting family expectations, and she was free to develop her own connection with the place. And therein lay the challenge. Because while she looked like everyone else, she didn’t have “the cultural competence to back it up.” She persevered, however, and this “hidden outsider” status ended up deepening her experience in Mumbai and fundamentally altering the course of her career. (She shares more in our companion YouTube interview.) It’s a funny, sweet story that touches on the power of early travel to shape our lives and the importance of intentionally seeking out, and sticking with, travel that puts us outside our comfort zone.   Resources Read the transcript of the episode. Listen to the episode on YouTube. Buy her book, Tread Brightly: Notes on Ethical Travel. Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week.