FOLLOWING THE WANDERLUST
Tanya Khanijow, Greater Noida YouTube: tanyakhanijow 284,000 subscribers —By Shelly Anand
Tanya Khanijow always knew she wanted to be a travel blogger. What started as a fun thing to do is now a full-time affair. She began by putting up photos of weekend backpacking trips on Instagram and launched her YouTube channel in 2017, with just 600 subscribers. An electrical engineer from Delhi Technological University, she quit her job in January 2018, learned video editing online and in the past two years has travelled to about 25 destinations in India, alongside 10 international trips.
TRAVEL TALES
“When I started in mid-2016, travel blogging on Instagram was in its nascent stage. I shot my first video on my phone during a four-day trip to Pondicherry in 2017 and took three weeks to edit it. I realised that videos do really well on social media and I knew I enjoyed making them. That’s how my YouTube journey started,” says Khanijow. Her videos and blogposts are engaging and relatable, and she tries to present destinations in new ways.“Travel is an outlet to recharge yourself,” she says, “and I try to present it positively. I feel happy when subscribers tell me that they felt as though they had travelled with me after watching the videos.”
PLANNING AND PROCESSING
Khanijow treats her work like running a small-scale business—from planning and production to marketing and budgeting. Being a social
influencer might look glamorous but it is hard and serious work. “You can’t hide on social media, so be yourself. Don’t worry about validation, views and likes.” She also says that apart from good planning and presentation skills, one needs to have an aesthetic eye and marketing acumen.
“FOCUS ON THE CREATION PROCESS, NOT THE RESULT”