We love saying:
“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” – Susang Sontag
The Yūgen Vibes
We firmly believe that this world, its people and nature possess an aura which has the power to trigger emotional responses from us. There is a wow factor in everything we see with our eyes. And that’s what Yūgen means “An awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words.” We strongly felt these Yūgen vibes while watching sunsets in Greece, hiking through Japan and gazing at the Alps.
Who we are?
Hello, we are Shaveta and Gaurav, a married couple and parents to one amazing (soon to be a teenager) boy. We are originally from India but came to United Kingdom in the year 2007. We live in the beautiful county of Hampshire. We are a regular family living a busy life but always thinking about cheeky city breaks or an extensive 15 days road trips to other countries.
Shaveta
I’m in my late thirties , living in this beautiful part of South coast of England. I grew up in Punjab, India, one of the most friendly states in India. I completed my masters in English language and literature. After finishing my degree, worked as lecturer in college for couple of years. I met Gaurav through a website named Hi5 (kind of predecessor of Orkut and Facebook:) ) After dating online and meeting him twice, we got married in 2007. We shifted to UK the same year and since then we love to call this beautiful part of South Coast as our home.
I’ve always been intrigued by distant lands, cultures and their way of living right from the beginning. I’ve always been fascinated how art and literature in any form depict the social condition of any given time. Books have always been my best companion. I am a chronic list-maker and a lover of everything written.
Nowadays you can find me rushing for school runs, sipping my selection of teas, rummaging through lifestyle stores, getting ideas for some creative content and organising my home and life in general. Music is another interest which is gaining a very predominant place in my life. Mornings usually start with some soothing music and winding through Bollywood numbers, Cafe d Anatolia and Spanish Lounge musics, the day ends at Beethoven and Calm App ( I highly recommend it, you can find the link here)
Travel, beauty and books have always taken a vital place in my life and I would love to inculcate these three in my blog. Cooking and Photography are other two. Though most of the amazing travel shots are taken by Gaurav, I would like to sneak credit for few of them 😉
Welcome to our little corner of internet and share our love for all not so perfect and/but beautiful things in life .
Gaurav
Hmm.. It’s such a difficult task to describe yourself. I remember, many years ago, when I was trying to kickstart my career in the corporate sector, I used to go blank whenever an interviewer used to start the interview by this question.. “Gaurav, please tell me about yourself”. Thankfully, I do not feel the same now.
But, now when I am trying to write about myself here, I am back to square one and feeling blank again (sic..)
Alright, let me try again..
I hail from the beautiful city of Chandigarh, India and living in the UK since 2007 with my wife (yes, the one above 🙂 ). Shaveta has already mentioned above how we met and got married. So, its not worth repeating (as they say “A wise man never repeats his mistakes” 😉 ).
I am an IT Business consultant by profession. Things which keep my soul alive are travelling (with family of course 🙂 ), listening world music, live concerts, watching movies and playing tennis with my son. I consider myself an audiophile who is very enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. I am always fascinated with high end speakers, headphones and music systems and can feel every minute details in the sound output. And the appetite to listen for more, grows and grows everyday.
Back in India, I used to represent my place ‘Chandigarh’ in various national tournaments in the game of Table Tennis. For that I used to travel to various places all across India. I have been travelling since I was 11 and it’s continuing till date (fingers crossed). I always look forward to see new places, meet new people and talk to locals wherever we go. I love to know more about them, their life stories and add them to my life experiences.
I love capturing moments and hence always keep my camera in hand wherever we go for travelling. I truly believe that a picture speaks thousand words. Shaveta loves to read and write and I love to take pictures.This where we come together as a team to form this blog.
I sincerely hope our experiences and pictures brings a smile on your face and inspire you to visit those places.
Why have we created this blog?
We wanted to maintain a travel diary which we can look back on for years to come. Our aim is to share our Yūgen travel experiences, stories and little tips from the places we’ve visited over the course of 12 years (within the UK and globally). We travel only during school vacations and half terms as we don’t want to disrupt our son’s school routine. We are still learning to balance home and travel yet want to give our son the best of both worlds. We want him to grow up believing that travelling is a great medium to forge an understanding with the outside world, create new memories and caring about other people and the world in general.
We are lifelong vegetarians and love to explore the vegetarian and vegan scene in various countries. We love reading, cooking and often experiment with various cuisines when we are not travelling.
Every vacation has its own learning curve, we are keen to learn yet sometimes prone to making mistakes, lol. We still have a long way to go before we learn how to travel light. Sometimes, we almost miss our breakfasts in hotels. We too, sometimes oversleep during our travels and then alter our plans for the rest of the day. We too get anxious about reaching late, missing the train, bus or any event all together. We do sometimes go crazy while buying souvenirs, chocolates and unique confectionary items but working hard to curtail these habits.
We are happy that you found us. We are far from ‘fiercely adventurous’ but we promise this journey will be anything but boring . We hope to inspire other parents to travel with their kids and share our little tips along the way. The journey is not without challenges but certainly very rewarding. Please feel free to say Hi to us or write to us at info@theyugenvibes.com. It would put a big smile on our faces. Welcome aboard..
Let’s explore together and connect to our Yūgen Vibes.
Really great to read about amazing Journey of beautiful couple till now. And I wish all the very best for future. 🥂
I think this blog experiment will be helping for people like me to decide their tours. If you guys don’t mind then I want to give you a task to write something on finding vegetarian food while travelling on different places. Most of the time it is really tough to find food for Vegans 🙂
Author
Thank you Jitender for your wishes and feedback. We are glad that you liked the blog and found it helpful. 🙂
We are vegetarian too and we know, finding a good vegetarian/vegan restaurants while travelling is a daunting task. Hence we have got the section called ‘Chasing Meals’ which will tell you about our expereinces of veg/vegan restaurants we tried while travelling to various places. We currently have two posts (to start with) and many more are coming soon 🙂
So, please stay tuned 🙂