My name is Kashyap Bhattacharya but you can call me Kash. It is an easy name to remember for some reason 🙂
I started the BudgetTraveller 8 years ago as an experiment. I wanted to have a place where I could share some of my travel stories and also the travel tips that my friends loved. I’ve been travelling on a budget for as long as I have been travelling. In 1999, I took my first trip to Ireland and caught the travel bug. Since I was studying as an international student in Scotland and paying silly amounts in tuition fees, I had little or no money so I was always keen to find hacks, ways of travelling for as little as possible. This blog is where I share all of those tips, tricks learnt through the years.
This blog is also a form of therapy. I had just lost my job that summer ( 2009) and I found myself in 3 different jobs to make ends meet. In my spare time, late evenings or weekends, I found the next best thing to not travelling was writing about the stories. Reliving the memories. Remembering the people I met.
This blog is also how I make a living. After 3 years of building the site and running it as a hobby, I took the plunge in 2012 of leaving my day job and becoming a full time travel blogger. As with running any start up or being self employed, I’ve experienced my fair share of highs and lows which one day I’ll share on the blog. In terms of how I make a living from the blog, I am sometimes invited by tourism boards to write about their destination. In return I get paid a fee. I am fussy about which destination or brands to feature on the blog. I only choose destinations which I feel my readers would be interested in visiting. I also work with a few affiliates on the site like Hostelworld and Booking.com If a reader makes a purchase through these links, I earn a commission which is at no extra cost to my reader. These commissions help me reduce the ever-increasing costs of running this blog. I also work an influencer relations expert for a destination marketing agency called Toposophy and am the creative director for one of the biggest travel influencer networks in the world called iAmbassador. Both these jobs allow me to supplement my blogging income and cover some of my overheads.
One of the most beautiful places I’ve visited: Laguna Torre, Argentina
What else would you like to know about me?
I am a design lover. A huge foodie as you know if you follow my Instagram stories. I am a lifelong supporter and huge fan of Liverpool FC. Other than football, I am an avid reader (currently reading Geoff Dyer’s White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World ) Music is the soundtrack to all my happiest and darkest memories and my musical tastes wildly vary from The National, Foals, Cigarettes after Sex, Beatles, Daughter to Ludovico Einaudi, Zero 7, Air, Daft Punk and Bonobo. I love photography. I’d like to be a better photographer. I used to write poetry and love to get back to writing it.
There is still a lot about me that I don’t know so keep coming back here for more intimate revelations about moi.
If you have any questions or like to know more, drop me a line kash AT budgettraveller.org
