The 25yr old solo female traveller who holds books and places dear to her heart - Parineet Kaur Chowdhury
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| at a bookstore, Mexico City |
This month seems to be my month of writing about 25-year-olds. I have written about Sports, then Academics, and now it's Travel.
Parineet Kaur Chowdhury could easily have been a subject for Academics too, and perhaps someday I will feature her on my blog for that aspect of her life. But today, I interviewed her because of the way she travels across India and the world whenever she gets the opportunity. She travels with friends and family, but many of her travels are solo trips. For someone so young to travel alone, especially in India, made me curious to talk to her and find out more.
Parineet grew up in Kolkata and did her schooling there. She then went to college in New Delhi, where she lived in a paying guest accommodation. Just in the middle of her Bachelor's degree, COVID hit and she had to go back to Kolkata. Parineet completed her Economics Honours at Shri Ram College of Commerce. She went on to work for a couple of years in Delhi and is currently in Cambridge, Massachusetts, doing her Master's at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Needless to say, I had to force myself to focus and talk about her travels rather than get too involved in the academic conversation, which was equally tempting. But as she began telling me about her travels, it became clear that for Parineet, travel is about much more than visiting new places. It is about discovering people, history, culture and, somewhere along the way, discovering herself too.
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| La Fortuna Waterfall, Costa Rica |
Her travels began mostly with her family. Then, during her school days, she was selected to participate in debating competitions in Lucknow, Dehradun and Dharamsala. She travelled to these places with her teachers and guardians. She was all of 15.
In the long 3-month break, immediately after she completed her schooling, she started taking day trips outside Kolkata with her friends to places like Chandannagar, Digha, Shanti Niketan - the birthplace of Rabindranath Tagore, and Mandarmani, a coastal village in West Bengal. Every time she stepped out of the city to discover historic places and their intriguing culture, she found herself gravitating quite naturally to her favourite spot, the local library. The books in the library helped her to understand the history and specific architecture of each place. These interesting books taught her about the people and how they lived. Since Parineet can read Bengali, these discoveries were easy for her. Those three months went by with her seeing places and building experiences.
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| Mexico City, Mexico |
That time also gave her a real taste for exploration and seeking knowledge. She started exploring Kolkata in detail. She went to many spots that she had never gone to before. The autorickshaw system has a fixed route till a last stop where these vehicles travel within the city. Parineet used to ride the auto rickshaw to the last stop and then explore the place, using her viewpoint to check out the old stores, buildings and all the hidden architectural gems around that area. She says that travelling shows her that she becomes a different person in every new physical space she visits, and thus it is like an external and internal discovery of sorts that happens simultaneously.
Thanks to her deciding to do her higher studies in Delhi, she got to leave Kolkata and, in her first year, she decided to travel to Rishikesh, Dharamkot and Tosh, which is in Himachal Pradesh. She even travelled to Amritsar. These were all trips with her college friends. She realised she loved to be out in nature and discovering new places, especially doing hikes.
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| Mexico City, Mexico |
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| Miami, USA |
In 2022, she planned a trip to Udaipur with her cousin. Her cousin had an issue and said she couldn’t travel with her. Hesitant till an hour before leaving for the airport on the trip, Parineet didn’t chicken out. Since her ticket and stay was already booked, she mustered all her courage and decided to do the trip anyway. She decided to take her flight, and there was no return flight booked at that point. This would be her first solo trip and, as it turned out, would go on to be her favourite trip.
For this trip, she had already pre-booked a three-day stay in a hostel and activities including a hike, a boating trip and a Rajasthani folk music programme of sorts.
She made a lot of friends in the place where she stayed and is still in touch with one person she met there. After the three days, there was no space in that hostel, but she decided to extend her stay by two days anyway and moved to another hostel. This was a one-bed space in a six-bed mixed dormitory experience, and she says she felt absolutely comfortable and fine.
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| Meal at Udaipur, India |
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| Udaipur |
Her parents, who were in touch with her throughout her stay, realised that she was fine and knew that she would travel back in a few days with an office colleague. So, this turned out to be her first solo trip of five days. During this trip, Parineet learned a lot about herself. In moments of doubt, she found a book, and that helped her get over any anxiety or feeling that was new to her.
So that was Udaipur... The first of many.
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| New York City, USA |
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| Pataya, Thailand |
At the end of 2022, she went to Goa by herself and stayed in a hostel. Parineet enjoyed the beaches, great food, time by the beach and time with herself. Also in 2022, she went with three friends for a girls' trip to Chennai and Pondicherry, indulging in a hotel this time. In 2023, she remembers going for a trip to Tosh, a quiet village in the Parvati Valley of Himachal Pradesh, to visit the ice-capped mountains. She went with her friend, but extended the trip by a day to be there by herself.
When she started working some time later, in the first year she travelled to Maharashtra with a friend and discovered places near Mumbai like Lonavala and Alibag.
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| Goa, India |
Later, as part of her work, she went for a field trip for approximately 25 days to four districts in Karnataka. She visited 10 to 15 villages with a colleague. This trip was one where she learnt even more, as it was not a touristic trip and not in flashy destinations. It was also her first experience of interacting intensely with the locals and hearing their stories. These conversations happened in the only house in the area with a light bulb and where she and her colleague got housed and fed.
This work involved trying to understand the impact of large-scale renewable energy power plants on nearby villages.They looked into what the real terrain issues were, such as land conflict and water supply deviation. Their duty was to check the extent of the problems. They got a chance to travel across the villages and speak to Gram Panchayats and District Commissioners.
During these weeks, Parineet gained the experience of understanding how to be part of someone else's day, how to understand and empathise with the lives they live and eventually make space for yourself in a community where you do not belong initially. This experience also gave her a good inkling about the work she wanted to do professionally. It made her passionate about her job. She enjoyed another work trip to Orissa in 2024.
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| Portland, USA |
Parineet is the second of two girls and her older sister is five years older than her. Her father works for a construction company that works for the Military. Since her sister was older, she kind of paved the way for her to get to do so many things on her own. Her sister is like a cushion, she says, who absorbs the worries and concerns of life before they can reach her.
While she goes back and forth trying to reminisce about her numerous trips and talks about her family, Parineet mentions that since 2022 she has visited Bengaluru to see her sister, who lives there. These occasions gave her several chances to explore bookstores, libraries and every possible interesting nook of the city.
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| Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic |
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| Samana, Dominican Republic |
In 2024, they travelled as a family to Thailand, visiting Phuket and Bangkok. Even when she travels with people she loves, Parineet still finds a moment to do something on her own. She wants to be able to see and do things without anyone around. Of course, this involves books in stores or libraries and local people. She loves to be by the beach, close to water.
Parineet makes a special mention of her love for exploring West Bengal and particularly Kolkata, her hometown, a city that runs at a slower pace and is radiant with the warmth of people strongly connected to culture and art. It's the literary hub with so much poetry in its pages that she feels the energy in her soul.
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| San Juan Teotihuacàn, Mexico |
Fast forward to 2025 and she got into Harvard, and it was her first ever time outside India. Since the States is such a big country and Parineet is now literally feeling like she's in a candy shop of options to travel, she made a pact that every week she wants to explore a part of Boston. Boston is about 40 minutes from Cambridge. She bikes her way to the Boston coast, the museums and the Public Library. She went with college friends to New Hampshire and Maine to visit the mountains, enjoying the hiking and hanging out in groups.
Travelling to new places for Parineet over the years has not been to just tick them off on a list. It has always been to be open to learning from a place. The freedom to do all this, the awe of the everyday routine of people in these places and finding beauty in the ordinary is what stands out for her.
Last winter, she travelled to Orlando, visited Disneyland, then went to Miami and visited the national park called 'The Everglades', enjoying her six-day holiday break.
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| Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic |
Just before this trip, Parineet decided that she would like to visit the Dominican Republic which is a country close to the States. She had read extensively about its history and its freedom struggle. She has idolized the Mirabal sisters who played a huge part in this struggle and wanted to know more about them. She contacted several NGOs in the country and tried to obtain a chance to work there.
Parineet offered a month of her time as a volunteer to teach English or provide any other support that was required. She just asked for a place to stay and the opportunity to experience the month with the locals. She still is so much in awe of the Mirabal sisters' work that she wanted to have a chance to live in their country and understand more of its history and geography. She wanted to learn the culture that her idols came from.
On 31 December 2025, she took a night flight to the Dominican Republic. She didn't know where she would stay or what work she would do. The only guarantee was that it would be an adventure, as the country is 98% Spanish-speaking and she couldn't speak any! She landed in the capital, Santo Domingo, and spent two days there on her own. Then she travelled with the help of the people who would take care of her to Salcedo, a small community in a rural area. This was the area where the Mirabal sisters grew up.
She met and stayed with her host family, who spoke English. She started teaching English in a school and met people who also came from Nigeria and Togo, along with locals. This turned out to be a beautiful experience as she got to visit each coast in the beautiful country and usually saw five or six places every weekend. She got to move around the country and visit the house where the sisters grew up. These activities were packed into her weekends.
Parineet cooked Indian food for her hosts and also got to go whale watching at Samaná, the southernmost coast. Luckily for her, it was the season of whales. She remembers being seasick on the boat as the whole expedition lasted eight hours. But it was worth the trouble, as she actually did see whales. At Samaná, she also visited an old age home which was run by an NGO.
What she learned was that in the rural towns everything is locally grown, and she got lucky and even visited cocoa fields and saw the whole process of how chocolate is made. Everything was turning out to be an enriching experience. Many of the people she had got to know by then wanted to taste Indian food. Parineet found herself at a professional restaurant kitchen with four chefs at her disposal. She was to cook food for 10 to 15 people. She made Masala Chicken for the hungry crowd and laughs today at how she led the four cooks, with them managing between Spanish and English. Facial expressions, translations and body language led to a good and tasty meal finally.
Parineet thinks the good thing about not knowing the language was that it gave her plenty of moments where she zoned out and didn't have to be part of the conversations. Language might be a barrier, but it was fun to navigate through, she says.
Apart from the Dominican Republic, Parineet has travelled to Mexico in Spring Break with her friends, where she got to see a professional wrestling match, watch a folk ballet performance and, of course, observe what locals like to see and do and experience during their weekends. Even on this trip she had two days to herself, where she went to a farmers' market, to local shops and spent time meeting people randomly and having conversations with them.
Parineet likes her time with herself and has also travelled to Portland, where she went to enjoy seafood and spend the day by herself on a random island which was pretty abandoned. She has also travelled to New York City for a weekend alone and spent her time walking the streets, visiting Times Square and nabbing a discounted Broadway show ticket. She emphasises how being alone can allow one flexibility to not have a planned day and choose what one wants to do at any given time.
During an international development internship in the summer, she travelled to Kigali, Rwanda. This was also for a month, in May 2026. Her sentiment is that the people are amazing and she is still in touch with some of the friends she made there. The Kigali Public Library was filled with interesting books and thus interesting people. She made friends with a film producer in the library who introduced her to books on the history, culture and politics. The country ranks near the top globally for female political representation, with women holding ~60% of parliamentary seats.
The friend from the library also suggested night karaoke, and Parineet got to see poetry performed at an open mic as one of the cultural activities he suggested.
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| Akagera National Park, Rwanda |
She also got a chance to go for a safari in Rwanda, which was one of the trip's highlights, as otherwise her favourite and regular activities were still walking around, seeing art galleries, visiting colleges or libraries and speaking to people she met there. The students' perspectives and their dreams make Parineet really happy. She is still mentoring one of the students she met there, a decision they made together when they first met.
Visiting a local market in a smaller area led to her unique experience of people surrounding her and being curious about her. She says she felt how tourists must feel when they visit some small towns or villages in India.
Now Parineet lives in Washington D.C. and is again doing an internship. She went to discover the Shenandoah National Park with a couple of people she knows.
Parineet just learnt to swim a few weeks ago, when she travelled to India and then Thailand with her family, and now she wants to learn deep-sea diving. She's just on her way back from Puerto Rico, so I guess she surely tried her hand at some swimming and diving there.
I guess life is how we make it. Parineet keeps all her budget for her biggest joy, travelling. She's making the most of her life, and I'm wondering how she manages to be amongst the best at studies while she does all this. She teaches us, probably, that we don't need to wait for tomorrow to do what we love, and if we love something a lot, we can do it now.
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