Three years ago, on this exact day, I found myself enjoying a rare free day in my college room at Cambridge University. Such instances were infrequent!
As is often portrayed in media, students at university appear carefree, socializing in pubs on Saturdays; however, that was not representative of my academic experience.
To clarify, many students at Cambridge engaged in leisurely activities.
During that time, I often felt envious of my peers enjoying leisurely moments by the college barbecue pits, phones out, and music being played at a respectful volume, while I headed to my class amidst a relentless succession of programming assignments, interspersed by brief breaks to check on Professor Stephen Hawking, whose office was conveniently in the same building.
On that particular day, three years prior, the weather was uncharacteristically warm, akin to ‘t-shirt and shorts’ weather, an anomaly for April in England, which experienced diverse weather conditions, often including snow and brief hailstorms within the month’s final week.
On this day, I also experienced a break between assignments. There were no deadlines, and no immediate tasks required my attention.
I contacted Lloyd, and we agreed to capitalize on the pleasant weather. In the midst of these discussions, we finally resolved to embark on a project we had contemplated for quite some time – a travel blog.
Interestingly, we had settled on the name nearly two years prior (for those curious, GoTravelDaily was inspired by our tendency to travel light, which had been our travel style as a group – somewhat confusingly, we do not solely travel with hand luggage, as such a restriction would not have been feasible during a three-week road trip across the USA.). Additionally, we had purchased the domain and even established a temporary website which had been awaiting activation.
This simply meant that on April 12, 2014, the time had finally come to design the website layout and publish our first posts! Some content had already been drafted in various forms, and we resolved to create an introductory post alongside several others and publish them! It was an exhilarating experience, even if at that moment, no one was reading it yet.
For some inexplicable reason, akin to the pride experienced after submitting a substantial academic report or completing a significant construction project, I felt a sense of accomplishment upon viewing a website we had just created. (This sense of pride now seems somewhat amusing considering this was the inaugural post I authored here).
We shared links to our posts on Facebook (believe it or not, I chose not to share this on my personal Facebook), perhaps due to a desire for this venture to stand independently at the outset. Moreover, I was uncertain about how my acquaintances would perceive it thus I hesitated.
Honesty compels me to admit that we did not create this blog primarily for our friends and family. At that time, Facebook sufficiently served that purpose, thus there was no need for a blog to duplicate what could already occur on social media. Conversely, we envisaged this blog as an opportunity to connect with fellow travelers.
This platform was a conduit to share our experiences, provide assistance, and generally offer as much information as possible for other explorers. We believed that increased knowledge among travelers would benefit everyone. Be it ten things to do in a particular location, discovering undiscovered gems, or helping others save money through tips we had unearthed along our journeys – our foremost aim was to be of assistance.
The aspect concerning photography was more personal than collective because having a blog incentivized me to utilize my camera more frequently. It provided a valid rationale for taking photographs, allowing them not to merely gather dust on a hard drive, though I still enjoyed sharing them with family and friends on Facebook.
Engaging in blogging also prompted me to enhance my photography skills, presenting a perfect rationale to acquire the desired cameras.
Long story short, blogging emerged as a significant avenue for creativity, connecting us with incredibly inspiring travelers.
A month after our launch, we experienced our initial spike in website traffic. Progress had been gradual until a particular Saturday in 2014 when a piece we had written ignited a surge of interest, leading to extensive shares among friends. The feeling was unparalleled. I transitioned from worrying that our website had been compromised (similar to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack designed to crash sites) to a state of exhilaration as comments, likes, and shares flooded in. These were not hackers; they were real travelers like us who cherished the opportunity to explore the world.
The same scenario repeated for numerous articles we published in the ensuing months and years. Our daily visitors escalated from an average of 80-200 (which felt monumental during that first month) to over 750,000 per month this year.
What an extraordinary travel community this has become! These are individuals who actively contribute their own tips and insights, enabling us to cultivate something substantial from virtually nothing. We are deeply appreciative of this vibrant community.
Ultimately, you represent the very essence of the GoTravelDaily community, and we take immense pride in being part of it with you. (It is genuinely true that it wouldn’t be what it is today without your support!)
Thus, it has now been three years since this digital space was established, and although you may be weary of hearing this, I must state it once again – THANK YOU!!! Thank you for co-creating GoTravelDaily. For participating. For commenting. For sharing. For the encouraging words that have lifted us in moments of doubt. For sustaining our momentum. For an abundance of reasons too numerous to articulate! Thank you!
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Here’s to three years!!!
*Since I am composing this in real-time (and I am also hours away from departing for a long trip without having started packing), I sincerely apologize for any typographical errors you may encounter while reading this! Haha! 😁 I will endeavor to rectify any mistakes afterward…
