StreetTrotter started with a backpack, a notebook, and a restless curiosity. Over the years, it’s grown into a space where I explore the world – not just its destinations, but its streets, its art, its fashion, its culture, and the people who make it alive. From mountain treks to street markets, from underground fashion to local design, every post is a story, a perspective, a little moment of discovery.

 

This is a place for travellers who want more than postcards. For those who notice the details, who get inspired by the way a city moves, a market smells, or a street corner is dressed. For those who want to see the world trip by trip, experience by experience, and maybe find themselves somewhere in between.

 

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👋 This is me, Shraddha, and the story of how travel, design, and life became one long adventure…

 

I began this blog in 2012, in a different time and in a different version of myself. Back then, “travel blogging” was still something new, almost radical, ‘a way to embrace the idea of being a traveler rather than just a tourist’. I wrote about solo journeys, new cities, and faraway adventures with the kind of wide-eyed wonder that only comes with being at the beginning of everything. My early travels: teaching English to Tibetan refugees in McLeodganj, daring the Chadar Trek across the frozen Himalayas — were more than trips; they were defining experiences that shaped how I saw the world and myself.

 

 

But life, as it does, grew and changed. Careers shifted, homes moved, countries were left behind and new ones were found. Somewhere along the way, I grew too — into a new person, with new questions and new ways of seeing the world. Through all those changes, this blog has been my one constant. It has moved with me, expanded with me, and quietly held space for each chapter of my life.

What started as a diary of travels slowly became something deeper. I realized that design and culture — two threads that have always run through my life — were as much a part of my journey as travel itself. The places I visited were not just destinations, but living stories of art, history, fashion, architecture, and people. And the more I explored, the more the blog became not just about where I went, but about how I saw.

Seeing the World Through Design

 

Alongside these travels, another thread has run quietly and consistently through my journey: design. For me, design has always been about the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times we live in. Traveling the world gave me the chance to tap into that spirit in a way no classroom ever could. Through the streets of different cities, through art on the walls, through the cut of clothes, through the way people gather and live — I’ve learned to see design not as a discipline locked inside studios, but as something alive, evolving, and everywhere.

Over the last fifteen years, my lens has been shaped by inspirations like Li Edelkoort’s Trend Tablet, Trendland, Kinfolk magazine, Business of Fashion, Humans of New York, and The Sartorialist — platforms that taught me to look closer at culture, people, and the stories streets can tell. They made me believe that fashion is taught best on sidewalks, that art and culture reveal where a society is headed, and that design is the way we trace those shifts. As I’ve moved through different places, I’ve realized how culture defines not just aesthetics, but the very rhythm of life and what it offers its people. That realization is what I try to capture here — through my camera, through my words, and through this blog. Design, for me, is ever-evolving; observing it is how we grow as humans.

 

Fashion is Life Woven in Threads

 

Fashion has always been a part of my life as well. From studying fashion design in college to teaching it as a professor between 2017 and 2019, I’ve learned that fashion is not just about clothing, but about identity, society, and the stories we inhabit. Traveling the world allowed me to observe fashion in context, from luxury capitals to underground street scenes, thrift markets to local subcultures. Fashion seeps into the very fabric of society, shaping and reflecting the lives of the people who inhabit it.

 

Considering its global impact – socially, culturally, and environmentally, it’s impossible for me to write about the world without noticing fashion. Observing fast and slow fashion, local trends, and street style has become a lens through which I understand the world and map where it’s moving.

Changing Careers in Motion

 

Career, like travel, design, and fashion, has been another lens through which I’ve understood myself and the world. After marriage, moving to new countries meant starting over professionally — navigating unfamiliar systems, building networks from scratch, and discovering that the path you studied in school doesn’t always define the life you live. Through these experiences, I realized that it’s okay to change careers multiple times. Just as design evolves, fashion shifts, and technology transforms, so too do the ways we work, create, and contribute. Nothing in life is constant, and learning to embrace that uncertainty has been central to how I live and travel.

It was during one of these life transitions, when I moved to Toronto, that I discovered UX design — a field that combined my love for creativity, problem-solving, and human-centered thinking. Today, through this blog, I share my honest journey, mentor those navigating similar transitions, and offer reassurance to anyone starting over in a new place or career. Life is too rich and wide to confine yourself to one path, and through travel, observation, and exploration, I’ve learned that there is so much to see, do, and experience — if you’re willing to keep evolving.

Streettrotter Today

 

Over the years, this space has also become my open journal — a record of growth, mistakes, joys, homes found and left behind. With every move, I began to ask myself what “home” really means. Is it the walls we decorate? The cultures we carry with us? The connections that ground us? Writing here has been my way of chasing those answers, even if they’re never final.

Thirteen years later, this blog is no longer only about travel — it’s about design, culture, fashion, careers, and the human need to belong somewhere. It’s about observing the world with curiosity and holding onto the small and the beautiful in the middle of all the change. For those who have stayed along on this journey, reading through the years, you already know me — not just as a traveler, but as someone who is constantly evolving.

This is, and always has been, my story of life — written out loud, lived in public, and shared with you as Streettrotter. If you’ve just found your way here, I hope you find pieces of your own story between these lines too.