College Sweethearts Who Have Travelled Around the World With Full Time Jobs!

There’s always been the question of whether you can have one thing without giving up the other. Similarly, everyone thinks about whether they can travel around the world without giving up their stable jobs in the process. Well, Sangeetha Ranganath and Prasanna Veeraswamy are two people who have managed to answer the question. These two travellers were able to arrange and take out time out of their busy work schedules to travel around the world while also keeping their full-time jobs.

Sangeetha has travelled to 168 countries while her husband Prasanna has travelled to all the 193 countries in the world, according to the UN. Their journey started with the first international flight they took to move to the USA in 1998. Ever since then, they have lived all over China, India, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand and are now based in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) where they have full-time jobs. Read below to find out how they were able to do this-

Travelling Is Possible With a Job!

Prasanna recalls, “In the beginning 10-12 years, we travelled only during the long weekends in the US calendar. For the long holiday in December, we would travel to Africa or Europe. However, over the last couple of years, we’ve been following a more aggressive travel schedule. We’ve managed to make around 7-8 trips in a year”. Moreover, the couple considers themselves lucky as they work for new-age technology-based companies that are lenient in terms of working remotely and at flexible hours.

Sangeetha says, “we always wonder how different it would’ve been if we had taken a long sabbatical from work and travelled all over in one shot. But because we believe that everything from people to places all evolves with time, we’ve been able to understand and appreciate the destinations we travel to much more.

Travelling With Different Passports!

Having received their American passports only in 2010, Prasanna and Sangeetha felt very proud to have travelled to so many countries with their Indian passport. Prasanna says, “During those times travelling was much harder because only a handful of countries would welcome Indians without a visa on arrival. Now more than 60 countries grant visas or provide visas on arrival. Although having the US passport provides flexible travel to many countries, many of the countries we travelled to still require visas".

Finding Vegetarian Food Isn’t a Problem!

Being a vegetarian in an unknown land, could be difficult. Sangeetha being a strict vegetarian, luckily, was able to find various delectable dishes in most of the countries like Ecuador, New Zealand and even in Spain. As for Prasanna, managing food was easier as he is a hardcore meat lover.

Beer Hopping Around the World!

Although their food choices are different, Sangeetha and Prasanna do have something in common when it comes to alcoholic beverages. They share their love for all kinds of craft beer. Prasanna even says that “Some of the finest beer we’ve had are in Edinburgh, Lima, Seattle, and Taipei. And if you’re looking for something different then Athens or Rome are unusual but great spots for some revolutionary brewed beers”. All of Prasanna’s beer-related adventures have been documented in an album.

Unleashing Their Tales of Adventure!

Some of the adventures Sangeetha and Prasanna have done range from rafting down the African Zambezi river, hiking up and ash-boarding down in Nicaragua, snow sledging in Antarctica and even partying in Syria in a 2000-year-old cave bar.

Once they took a road trip from Sierra Leone to Liberia with a driver, his friend, and his old jeep. With the blazing sun on their heads, Prasanna and Sangeetha made it to the border of a town called Bo, which ended being shut and that made them stay in a hotel with no electricity and cockroaches swarming all around. Although the trip had been nothing short of a nightmare, it, yet ended up being another one of their most memorable expeditions.

After the sunset, the couple retired to the courtyard area where the cook laid out a special spread of French fries, spicy African curry (vegetarian and non-vegetarian) along with some chilled beer. After some time, local families gathered to watch a football match that turned out to be one of their favourite memories of the trip. Sangeetha recalls, “we had so much fun drinking and cheering with the locals while watching the game. We also ate enjoyed a hearty meal and retired to our rooms with a smile on our faces. Suddenly I realized nothing else mattered at that moment, and everything reminded me of why I love travelling and why I love Africa”. 

One time when visiting Iraq, they met up with their friends who took them bar-hopping in Baghdad. On this trip, there was one thing that surprised them, and it was the nightlife scene in Iraq. Whenever they would enter a bar, their friends would very calmly check-in their guns as normally as checking-in a coat. The couple talks about how they would be hanging out in the bar, gossiping, laughing, drinking and to assure the security the guns would come in handy. According to them, that trip was one of the most memorable trips of their lives.

From being college sweethearts to now being married and exploring the stunning vistas of the world, this travel couple is undoubtedly living the best of their lives. They say "when your choices include not investing in a home or having kids, society tends to categorize those choices as sacrifices. We have given these things a lot of thought and don’t feel any kind of regret or loss about not having any of those things. That is what reassured us that it wasn’t a sacrifice but our own choice".