Change and continuity; Happy New Year 2019!

2018 has been another huge year for both myself and UrbanDuniya. After a huge 2017, launching my second of Pakistan Traveller, much of this year was spent promoting the book and getting more and more involved in the business of promoting Pakistan’s tourism industry which again appears to be on the upswing.

I have appeared on television and radio shows in Pakistan and been invited to speak at numerous events about topics as diverse as my experiences as a traveller in Asia to the impact of new technology on the portrayal of travel in the media. This has been an excellent way to promote my work, but on a personal level it has also been deeply satisfying. As a child and teenager I suffered from a serious fear of public speaking – and not just the typical nerves, but crippling physical manifestations of my anxiety. To be in the public eye, to have my work recognised, and to speak about it with increasing confidence, has been a wonderful experience and one that I truly cherish.

With Shabnam Riaz at the PTV World studios in Islamabad

I have also travelled to some amazing places both inside and outside of Pakistan, and mostly off the beaten track. I started the year in Pakistan in the deserts near Jhang, and have also taken in Multan, Sheikhupura, Kasur, the Kumrat Valley and Sialkot, about which I wrote a piece for Dawn which has been highly acclaimed. I’ve also visited Istanbul (about which I wrote a piece entitled “Vivid Cities”), Sharjah (which was a very pleasant surprise) Ajman and Sydney. But by far my most amazing trip of the year was joining the Arbaeen pilgrimage in Iraq – I attended that in October and have posted about it on social media, and am currently in the process of collating my videos and photos to be published in a series in 2019.

At the shrine of Baba Bulleh Shah in Kasur

The evolution of social media continues to challenge and mould the blogging game – in fact in 2018 I noticed UrbanDuniya’s audience becoming much more social media and vlog based (my YouTube channel recently reached 2,000 subscribers), constituting “viewership” much more than “readership” – something that I have learned to (and am still learning to) adapt to. This is also an extension of transitioning UrbanDuniya to a true travel blog, rather than the previous model of a lifestyle blog which included travel, social commentary and restaurant reviews, among other themes. I’ve been focussing almost predominantly on travel since late 2016; the shift from lifestyle and text to travel and visual culminated a month ago when I relaunched my YouTube channel with vibrant new branding. I still occasionally write on social or cultural topics, but it usually has a link to travel, like my recent “Xennial road trip” music play list on Spotify. It’s been exciting to find new ways to blend popular music, food, art, social issues and spirituality with travel.

I have a huge 2019 lined up too – more religious pilgrimages, in-depth city profiles, lots and lots of pictures, videos and colour, two new books in the pipeline and a couple more countries that I’ll be visiting for the first time! There are lots of blogs to be written, vlogs to film, trips to be taken and experiences to be had – I won’t be giving anything away here, so you’ll just have to stay tuned!

It might be a cliche, but it’s true that “the only thing which is constant is change”, and all I really know about 2019 is that it will move faster and bring more change than anything before. Despite much evidence to the contrary in today’s world, I also follow the ethos that integrity, consistency and persistence eventually pay off – this is the ethos on which I founded UrbanDuniya in 2013. The year ahead will be more of the same – real travel, real experiences, places you (and I) didn’t even know existed, people whose stories fascinate and events which blow the mind.

I wish everyone a very happy new year, and thank you all very much for reading, viewing and interacting with me and my work over the past year.

Your support has been endless, sincere and meaningful in ways you can’t even imagine, and I am truly humbled.

I can’t wait to see what 2019 brings for all of us.