About Raj Bhattacharya
Hi, I am Raj (full name: Prithviraj Bhattacharya). I am the founder and author of this website. I started my professional career after completing my engineering in Computer Science with honors from Indian Institute of Technology. I had subsequently received a professional certification from ITSqc, a unit of Carnegie Mellon University (USA).
So you might be wondering what am I doing here on a travel website? All I can say that life can change along the way as it did for me, took a complete 'U' turn and I re-discovered myself, and this time as a professional travel writer and a web publisher... don't see that changing anytime soon.
Here is my story...
As I stepped into the corporate world, I found success at a relatively young age... great recognition and pay as I kept climbing the corporate ladder to eventually find myself in senior management roles in giant global companies like IBM where I worked for nearly 11 years during the last stint of my corporate career. However that success was accompanied with huge stressful conditions and it was silently eating into me... I realized that I was losing my work-life balance.
Then came a time when some serious thoughts passed my mind and I wondered if this was the way I wanted to spend rest of my active life. My wife often questioned me... "Do you ever notice how's our son growing up?"... that thought haunted me for long, and I often found myself in the cross-roads of an established corporate career and a rising passion threatening to break out.
Knowing well that the latter had an unknown future, eventually the passion got the better of the two and I decided to quit my job in 2010. My last job role was of a Vice President of IBM India/South Asia.
But why travel writing?
I have always been an avid traveler... at the age of 16, I managed to save some money from my school allowances and set off for a 15-day tour to the hills in Darjeeling all on my own... hitchhiking and backpacking all the way. Subsequently I have traveled to many parts of the world. During my early corporate years I moved to Boston (USA), worked and lived there. And I loved travelling all my life.
Over the years I traveled to many countries in Europe including England, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy etc, and a number of countries in Australasia and Asia including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
And I guess there would be very few to claim having seen India the way I have. And I visited a number of these countries several times. All these travels have been mainly motivated by my passion to explore the land, people and culture.
My wife and I first visited Bermuda in 2005. Two significant things happened during that visit which triggered some serious thoughts in me to look at life in a different way. First, was the amazing charm of the island, the people, the beautiful pink beaches and nature, the turquoise waters of the Atlantic... it was first of a kind experience for us and opened our eyes to how wonderful a place could be on earth.
The second and a highlight of the visit was a personal meeting with
Teddy Tucker, a world renowned diving veteran and a native of Bermuda who collected invaluable treasures from the underwater shipwrecks around the island. It was a real honor to have interacted with such a personality and spend a long time with him and his wife listening to their life stories. I was moved by Teddy's wisdom, talent and commitment to his work and family and that continues to remain as a great inspiration in my life. I was deeply saddened when I came to learn in 2014 that he passed away.
With Teddy Tucker and his wife in Bermuda in 2005
It was the passion for travel and the memories of my first visit to Bermuda in 2005 that started driving me to re-think about life. I started writing travelogues in my spare time which I shared only with my personal friends. The feedback encouraged me to dig deeper into travel writing. In 2008 I created this website with only handful of pages. It all started like a hobby writing about a place that I loved.
Gradually over time I kept adding content, interacted with viewers, tried my association with Google for possible monetization, and slowly it started to work! In 2010 I handed over my papers, quit my job and turned into a full-time travel blogger... and there was no looking back since then.
Today, there are nearly 1,400 pages on this website. Right from the beginning, my mission has been to create top quality content, provide insightful answers to questions and help travelers to Bermuda realize their travel dreams. I also write about allied areas and anything related to the island that could be of interest to the readers. And I am glad that over the past many years, this website has remained a leading online source of information for Bermuda and its tourism.
Many large online brands have provided editorial references to my website by linking to my various articles and have endorsed the value of such information to their own readers. Here are a few:
And many more...
Do I do anything else?
Yes, of course! While most of the time I am either traveling or glued to my laptop writing or updating articles, I am a big time fan of Cricket - a sport that I loved since my childhood. I seldom miss a chance to see a big game of cricket either live on TV or on the ground. In fact, I am an avid follower of one of the greatest annual events in Bermuda...
The Cup Match (a cricket tournament between the arch rivals of Somerset Cricket Club vs. St. George's Cricket Club) which is held over 2 days in July end.
I love to start my day with a cup of coffee and the melodies of Lionel Richie, Eric Clapton, Julio Iglesius, John Mayer and the likes. On the week-ends I love to enjoy a drink or two (usually whiskey) and get into jovial and often meaningless conversations with my family and friends.
I have been a driving fanatic and drove through 17 states in the US, but one of my favorite drives was from Boston to Canada via Buffalo and Niagra over to Toronto, then all the way to Kingston, Montreal, Quebec city and back via Vermont... a 1,500 mile drive over a long week-end. And another one in Tasmania (in Australia) for 750 miles exploring its beautiful countryside.
Sometimes I switch to the technical world... that's perhaps because of my technology background. For nearly 17 years I had been a Governing Body Member of the Technology Board (called TIETS and STEP) of Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur). The Board Members met several times in a year to decide on the future course of actions around incubating budding technology entrepreneurs, making better tech infrastructure, growing industry relationship, and such.
What are my rewards?
I have an association with Google to display ads on my website. Since the time I started this publishing partnership with Google in 2009, the viewership and ad revenue of this website has continued to grow and remained a major source of my earning.
And the sale of my eBooks plus affiliations with large online businesses such as Viator and Booking.com give me a great second source of earning. Honestly, my website has given me all the financial freedom I wanted, in fact more. I can now travel to any place in the world at my own will and with no strings attached... this I think has been the greatest reward in my life.
But was it easy? By no means... it required unrelenting hard work and commitment day after day and for over 10 years to get to where it is today. And there were only two compelling forces behind me to make this happen... it's my love for Bermuda backed by passion for travel blogging.
I am thankful to thousands of readers who wrote back to me appreciating my work and the benefits they could glean out of this website. Here are a
few messages from the readers that give me the conviction that I must be on the right track.
Cheers!
Raj Bhattacharya
You can also find me at:
Other works by Raj:
Darjeeling-Tourism.com: A website that explores Darjeeling district and the state of Sikkim in India along with several other destinations in North-East Himalayas.
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