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ABOUT NATNZIN

Hello, we are Nathan and Zinara. In 2015, we met in a quirky backpack hostel in Colombo, fell in love, and started travelling together. Through NatnZin, we document our real, honest travel experiences coupled with captivating photography. Read more about us here.

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I remember sitting here. On the powdery sand. Look

I remember sitting here. On the powdery sand. Looking at the world go by. I remember looking at a group of fishmongers sailing ashore. I remember looking at desi aunties wearing sarees to the beach. Their pallus glistened. I remember having corn on the cob. I remember looking for fresh coconut water. I didn't find coconuts that day.

I remember walking on the sand. Screaming and running along the banks like a wee kid. I remember waiting for the setting sun. Birds chirped. Kids flew kites. Colourful ones.

Looking back today, on the 16th day of being indoors, sometimes I feel like we don't really appreciate the freedom some of us have, to watch the setting sun, to run on the sand, to scream in joy, to taste ice cream joining hundreds other strangers, who, like you, wanted to have one ice cream.

Maybe they wanted double chocolate chip cookies with coffee. And you wanted butterscotch, or caramel. But all of wanted to taste ice cream, watching the setting sun on a crowded beach. Crowded, nonetheless beautiful. And we seldom appreciate the freedom of being able to have ice cream on a crowded beach. We don't appreciate the earth's marvels we unravel as we travel.

Now, on my 16th day being inside the house, I long for one ice cream on this crowded beach. Double chocolate cookies with a hint of coffee, please.

#natnzin #india #incredibleindia #andhrapradesh #vizag

A few days ago, my editor from the inflight magazi

A few days ago, my editor from the inflight magazine of Etihad Airways emailed me. It says that the March issue was the last and they are ceasing publication. I had a story for Etihad, already submitted. It's been killed. I get half of the original rate as the kill fee. I lost a precious byline. My editor lost her job. Just like that.

Like with many others, freelancing is a tough career right now. For independent journalists and writers, there's hardly any publication looking for non virus stories. Some magazines have stopped taking pitches. Others have reduced their fees.

Here are a few things I've learnt if you are thinking of freelancing in the future:
1. Never make it your only way of income. Never! Applies to all fields of freelancing. I do writing and social media marketing. And I'm planning to add a third income method. Nathan does a 9-5 (in the coolest office probably) but he does digital marketing and makes websites as his second income method.
2. Have a steady gig (or two or three). Both my steady, reoccurring gigs are in social media and not related to writing.
3. Don't let it burn your energy. Rejections are common and no, it's not a rat race.
4. Please don't send 100 pitches to publications in a month. I never have.
5. You can be a non-native English speaker and still write for international publications. Don't be afraid to pitch.
6. Twitter is where you find call for pitches.
7. Always, always, always discuss a kill fee if your agreement doesn't mention that. Always. I've never done it but I will now.
8. Send your invoice as soon you submit your first draft. An editor told me this. Yay to publications who pay immediately.
9. Always, always, always ask for a higher rate.
10. Be ready to work from anywhere anytime. I did edits to a piece for Singapore Air on my phone, sitting on a boulder rock by a cold river in a small village in Meghalaya at 4 in the evening with bad internet and a dying phone. I had to be fast because I was camping on the other side of the river and there was no electricity. I hope my editor doesn't read this.

#natnzin
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#india #freelancing #delhi

It's day 12 of social distancing for me and Nathan

It's day 12 of social distancing for me and Nathan both. Nathan had to go out yesterday to buy groceries though.

Let me be honest. First ten days were fine but yesterday, I've been feeling low for no reason. It feels dull, monotonous and sometimes you feel like you are awaiting an impending doom. And I've been missing Nathan terribly. We are in one country, which is a small island and 2-3 hours apart from each other but there's a curfew and our district borders are closed for non-essential travel. I left Colombo last Sunday to see my family for two days. And now it's day 12.

Sometimes, it gets to you and it sucks being alone, or being in negative environments or being away from those who love you.

For those with anxiety, please remember to breath ♥️. I wrote about the homeless and low-income families during the social distancing on our stories. If you can, please donate to @carestation.lk—they are helping those in need right now.

In my next post, I'll talk about freelancing during the pandemic.
Take care and lotsa love!
Nathan and Zinara
#natnzin

Hello friends! Hope you are all well ✨ I wrote a

Hello friends! Hope you are all well ✨ I wrote a long post for Instagram yesterday but IG didn't let me post it and I lost the long caption and now I'm too lazy to write anything new. It was something about nice people.
Nathan is in Colombo and I'm with my parents in Kurunegala, it's a town aprox 100 km from Colombo. Hope you are all home and practicing social distancing.

Until I get some energy to write a few nice stories here, take care 🙂 PS: a photo from #Meghalaya in October.

#natnzin

She's Naveena. The girl on the train. She told me

She's Naveena. The girl on the train. She told me she wanted to be an actress in Telugu movies.

We both sat on a sleeper class compartment with only general class tickets in hands (don't do it! It's a punishable offense and you'd be fined) because a nice guy from the South gave us his seat and minded his own business. South people have warm hearts, but that's for another day.

Naveena got off the train two stations before I did. She worked in Rajamundry, in HR. And on this day, she was homesick. She boarded a train which takes two hours along the lush rice fields and cotton farms so she could see her parents. "I want to act. I don't like my office work," she'd tell me.

Then she'd take her phone, show me a picture of a twenty- something, "that's my boyfriend. We want to get married. But he belongs to an upper caste and his parents won't give the approval," she says, her bright smile is now nowhere to be seen, "it's bad. Why do we have to think of castes?" She asks me.

When she got off the train, I told her to keep trying and not lose her dreams and maybe one day, she'd get to act. I told her that she'd be together with the person she loves. That she shouldn't lose hope.

A few weeks ago, I received a text from her: "I wanted to tell you first. I got a role in a Telegu movie." The girl on the train wanted to be an actress. And she did. She was happy.

But life, sometimes, works in funny ways.
Last week, she texted me again. "There's something sad I wanted to tell you." She sends me a picture of her boyfriend, in his wedding attire, with another woman. "He was married off to another person and he said yes to his parents," Naveena says, on text.

And this reminds me of one tweet I saw in the last few months—even if India don't have other minority religious groups, the Hindu majority nation would never be united, as there's always a caste system to divide them.

For Naveena, she'd be fine, she last told me, because life is too short to worry over a guy who prioritized his caste more than the person he loved.

#natnzin
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#india #andhrapradesh

I was free today so I wrote a love letter to #Kolk

I was free today so I wrote a love letter to #Kolkata.

An excerpt: I remember passing the iconic Howrah Bridge, sitting on a quintessentially Kolkatan yellow taxi. My friend stood in queue for thirty minutes to reserve it. It was more expensive than Uber. I remember mellow rays of the orange sun, slowly kissing the iron gates of the bridge that connects the two banks. They flickered through the stained glass window of our taxi, bringing me joy. I tried capturing the golden ball, gradually raising higher to warm the vibrant cityscape. No phone camera would ever do justice to the earth’s marvels.

Link in bio if you wanna read ✨♥️ #natnzin
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#india #westbengal #incredibleindia🇮🇳

Just came here to say hiiiii ✨🌻🌿 hope you

Just came here to say hiiiii ✨🌻🌿 hope you are all having a good start to the week ♥️ #natnzin

In Guwahati, I stayed at my friend @sahidulislaml'

In Guwahati, I stayed at my friend @sahidulislaml's place who also happens to have this lovely homestay @travellersabodeguwahati ✨🌿 So on most days, I met new people.

Once I met a couple from the Netherlands, who were actually Polish and Turkish. They told me that, for them, Colombo felt so... disconnected. "It was as if there's no soul. There's no heart in it." Yesterday, I grabbed a tuk tuk from the suburbs of Kotte — the actual administrative capital of Sri Lanka — to Colombo 06.

And during my journey, passing through skyhigh buildings the city doesn't even require to green, well-maintained upmarket residential areas, cafes serving overpriced coffee to flower hauls and nurseries, I kind of understood what they meant. For years living in Colombo, I've always felt that Colombo has very little soul but I never thought it was so disconnected. That it feels like a huge land with parts here and there, some nice, some not so. It doesn't really speak to your heart. It doesn't touch your soul.

I'm very keen on hearing your thoughts on how you feel about Colombo 🌿
A photo from my sis' place in Kotte.

#natnzin .
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#srilanka #colombo

My three months in India come to an end today. Tha

My three months in India come to an end today. Thanks to beautiful human beings for making my time here more vibrant and full of life.

I've had grilled fish sitting on roadside benches, gulped down plenty cups of chai, and devoured plates of biryani from makeshift stalls — some spicy like the authentic Andhra that put my Assamese friend into tears, others mild, soft and delicious with aloo (potatoes) and chunks of mutton.

I've slept on cozy AC classes and hopped on passenger trains in Uttar Pradesh. I've been yelled at train stations in rural UP and offered seats, shared happy conversations and made lifelong friends in the Southern railways. I've hopped and fallen asleep on rickety buses along the paths with little care that it caked my hair with layers and layers of dust.

I've crossed borders to embrace the wintery Himalayan air and enjoyed slices of thin crust pizza topped with chicken and cheese in Nepalese cafes. I've been terrified at 2AM sitting in the dark inside train compartments that I heard the news of violence in Guwahati — a city which would become my home for months.

I walked on pedestrian paths lined up with piles and piles of secondhand books, shared smiles as conversations because my language is poor and made friends with cats and dogs (and goats) I see on roads.

In Meghalaya where I left my heart a year and a while back, I found solace in turquoise waters and happiness in crisp mountain air. I wrapped myself in thick blankets to escape the December cold in the hills of Jaintia — where erstwhile kings once enjoyed supper, now a land for multinational businessmen profiting out of its coal and limestone.

I celebrated Christmas in Naga houses, sat by the mighty Brahmaputra on the New Year's Eve and hunted for fish inside the dark alleys of local markets.

I danced on powder-sand beaches and screamed in joy on top of the hills.

There's stunning blue waters in the South and yards of paddy in green where men and women work day and night to feed our stomachs.

To those who find happiness in tea cups and local homes in the rural countryside, there's love here. There's warmth and sunshine and comfort ✨🌻 #natnzin

The time I spent Christmas in #Nagalanad. This is

The time I spent Christmas in #Nagalanad. This is Nagaland's #mokokchung district — the native land of the Ao Naga community ✨♥️ #natnzin .
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#nagaland #india #northeastindia #incredibleindia #indialove #India2020 #thisisnortheast #discovernortheast

Within the five frames, each of them carefully cur

Within the five frames, each of them carefully curated, trimmed in flowers beneath a layer of yellow. The young couple. The mother. The heiress of the household. Their relatives from another village. A family living in the backwaters of Godavari.

A bottle of water, some sweets filled with scraped coconut mixed with golden sugar syrup, and two glasses of refrigerated Coca Cola, for me and my friend. All in exchange for sweet nothingness — a thread of smiles, conversations in colonial language, one photo for me and one photo for them ♥️ #India2020
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#natnzin #India #andhrapradesh #eastgodavari #incredibleindia #indialove

"hey bro, you wanna click me?" That's what you hea

"hey bro, you wanna click me?" That's what you hear when you walk into Shillong's Punjabi Lane. A few days ago, my friend @sahidulislaml took me here for beef curry with a plate of rice and seekh kebab. This was a world I didn't know existed in Shillong.

It's not even half a kilometer in length. It bustles with activity. It's lined up with houses painted in bright hues. Kids play with each other, run around and scream in joy. Teens are busy on their phones. From outside, it looks like another normal neighborhood. But there's bitter history and then there's a troubled present. At each end of the lane, a group of policemen sits on rickety chairs.

A gurudwara is being build, standing tall as the only noticeable building in the neighborhood, bringing solace to a community labeled as 'outsiders' in a city which they served for years and years.

Meghalaya 2020.
#natnzin #Shillong #Meghalaya #India

Flower market haul, Rajamundry ✨🌻 I'm so shy

Flower market haul, Rajamundry ✨🌻 I'm so shy to ask people for photos but anyone hardly says no when you ask. It also opens up lots of interesting conversations ✨♥️ #natnzin
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#india #india_gram #indiaphotos #incredibleindia #andhrapradeshtourism #andhrapradesh #india_clicks

Posting this beautiful beach day photo Nathan took

Posting this beautiful beach day photo Nathan took at @elementsresort a couple of weeks ago for a change ✨🌿🌻 #natnzin

Two sisters. Last days of Pongal. Their mother bey

Two sisters. Last days of Pongal. Their mother beyond the frame. From the back alleys of the laid-back Vizag.
#natnzin
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#india #india_gram #indiaphotos #incredibleindia #indiaphotography #india_everyday #india_lens #vizag #vishakapatnam #andhrapradeshtourism #andhrapradesh #india_clicks

The unofficial 'Rice Bowl of India'. I have so muc

The unofficial 'Rice Bowl of India'. I have so much love for the South of the country. It's brimmed with beautiful landscapes. It's mellow. It's warm. It's a rugged coastline with sometimes choppy sometimes lazily lapping waves. There are palms — coconuts, palmyra and others I cannot name. There are endless fields of paddy.

There are people I love. People who would talk, share seats, biscuits and chai. Curious hobbyists who collect world currencies and ask me for notes from Sri Lanka I don't have. There are conversations filled with smiles, laughter and warmth. There's salt in the coastal breeze and birds fly across the banks of the mighty rivers.
To the South of India, you've a place in my heart ♥️ #natnzin .
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#india_gram #india #indiaphotos #indiaphotography #incredibleindia #instatravel #indiapictures #india_everyday #india_lens #paddyfields #eastgodavari #godavaririver #godavari #andhrapradeshtourism #andhrapradesh

Pyaar in one picture ♥️✨ there's literally n

Pyaar in one picture ♥️✨ there's literally nothing like a good cup of Indian chai.
#natnzin .
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#india #india_gram #incredibleindia #indiaphotography #india #chai #india_everyday #india_lens #indiapictures #andhrapradesh #indianfood #andhrapradeshtourism #godavaririver #godavari

Life along the Godavari. From a small village name

Life along the Godavari. From a small village named Yenugupalli, 15 km from the nearest town.

Before this, we were in Kakinada — a beautiful coastal town with a dense mangrove system. We were staying in a small hotel and one of the staff members who brought us chai happened to be very helpful. He was young. In his early twenties we thought. He was Shekar.

Kakinada has an amazing parcel system — tiny eateries everywhere for takeaway food. Portions are huge, at least for our stomachs. We bought one parcel of single chicken dum biryani and another parcel of curd rice. Instead of throwing it, we decided we'd give Shekar some biryani and curd rice. "Thank you," he told me, and he started crying. Mumbling something in Telugu, a language I'm extremely alien to. He was probably missing home, or he wasn't treated well at his workplace. I can only come to my own prejudices.

The next day when we told him we'd stay for one more day, he was overjoyed. "You are staying for another day?" He'd laugh. That's when I asked him about his home. His village and his family. He is 19. His little brother is in class 8. His mum is a housewife. What he told me about his father remains unclear.

He was unable to go home for Sankranti — or, pongal, as we call in Sri Lanka. They didn't let him. "There's so much work at the hotel," they'd tell him.

That's when we decided we'd visit his family. So we did. This is his village. Yenugupalli. It sits along the Godavari. It's land of fertility. There are palm groves, banana plantations and yards of paddy.

It's a rich land but not quite rich enough to keep young Shekars home.

Such is the nature of the world we yearn to see.

#natnzin
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#godavari #godavaririver #india_gram #indiaphotos #incredibleindia #india #india_everyday #india_lens #indiapictures #andhrapradesh #konaseema #lonelyplanet #livethelittlethings

Snapshots from Kolkata ✨ My friend @sahidulislam

Snapshots from Kolkata ✨ My friend @sahidulislaml took some beautiful photos which capture the sociocultural landscape of the bustling metropolis. Vivid, vibrant and full of life ♥️ #natnzin
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#Kolkata #India #indiaphotography #india_gram #incredibleindia #india_everyday #indiapictures #westbengaltourism #westbengal #india_lens #indiaphotos #kolkatadiaries #kolkatadiaries #kolkata_lanes #kolkataphotography

I've been in India for over six weeks now. It's be

I've been in India for over six weeks now. It's been wonderful hopping trains, climbing mountain hamlets, taking ferry rides, chasing sunsets and waking up to the cold winter sun. Here's a photo of the sinking sun over the mighty Brahmaputra, the lifeline of Assam.

#natnzin

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