Update: I quit my PhD, completed a road trip of 15,000 miles across continental USA doing backcountry camping and currently in India figuring out the next step.

Research student by profession, lover of art, literature & philosophy, photographer and traveler by passion.

When I was very young, I used to think I can complete visiting a place. Having lost that youthful confidence and ambition, now I prefer to linger around places as long as I can to take in the mood. Also overtime, people slowed me down and imbued my travel with richness for which I'm grateful forever.

You can find some of the photos from my travels here
https://www.instagram.com/wanderlust.scientist/
https://www.facebook.com/vamsikrishnakv/

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

"There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met." - Yeats

Music, Movies, and Books

A flavor

Movies :
I grew up watching films in a household that adores them and in a culture that venerates them. Needless to say, they assumed a defining role in my life and guided me .

Movies of Krzysztof Kieślowski, Abbas Kiarostami, K Viswanath, Wong kar-Wai, Andrei Tarkovsky, Pedro Almodóvar, Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen and Hayayo Miyazaki

Some Favourites :
Little Miss Sunshine, Kadaisi Vivasayi, Cinema Paradiso, Amator, My night at Maud's,Blade Runner, Dead Poets Society, Harold and Maude, Pain and Glory, Rashomon, Amelie, Into the Wild, Lord of the Rings, Goodwill Hunting, Her

Books:
I read a lot, spanning across many genres. You can find a representative intro here
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/16689568-vamsi-krishna-kv

To just mention a few, it would look like this Gabriel Garcia, Saramago, Oliver Sacks, Nabokov, Huxley, Hemingway, Camus, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Rushdie, Conrad, Voltaire, Steinbeck, Kundera, Henry Miller, Tagore, Oscar wilde, Herman Hesse, Sapolsky, Sagan and I can just go on and on.

Music:
Although I never had formal training in music, I spent long enough to develop a curious ear to sample music across genres and cultures .It is fun to dive across and space and time like 60's Greek folk to 80's Russian rock, North-African Raï to Persian classical, Brazilian bossa nova to Japanese psychedelic-folk and so on. Lately I've been deep diving into Spotify and finding music that is truly transcending traditional genres

To name some

Western and Indian Classical Music, soundtracks of Ennio Morricone and Preisner, Alternative Rock, Post Rock, Jazz, Prog Rock, EDM, Ambient, Hiphop

Some specific artists/bands
Leonard Cohen, Radiohead, The Beatles, Coldplay and PinkFloyd

Finding obscure musical gems is my perpetual obsession

Do send me any one of your favorite film, book(even a quote or poem), piece of music or anything that inspires your passion.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Life had been a gift to have experienced wonders of the world and human connection. Here are a few experiences that stand out in the ocean of memory

Tubing in Laos surrounded by towering karsts under the starlit sky
Covering every temple complex in Angkor Wat in 3 days, spending 18hrs per day in exploration
Date in Vienna (almost like 'Before sunset' movie )
Late night hitchhiking in a vegetable van in Bhutan
Getting wasted on vodka with strangers on a remote Russian Island singing folk songs and going around dunking in the lakes

Climbed a volcano in Guatemala

Being hosted by a guy who had been to 188 countries in the world

What I Can Share with Hosts

STORIES!
I am a trove of stories..stories of adventure, travel, mishaps, heartbreaks...You name it, I have it..All Genres (laughing!)

I had multicultural experience through my extensive travelling around the world. I can share about budget backpacking as well as backcountry camping etc

Being curious and avid reader, all throughout my life, you can ask me about almost anything you want to learn or know. I am good at finding resources in case I haven't mapped so already

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Bhutan, Cambodia, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, France, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Laos, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Austria, India, Netherlands, United States