From Boardrooms to Backpacking: How this Chennai Techie Dumped a Rs 30 LPA Job for a Life of Backpacking Across India

It was a nondescript day in Chennai, with traffic humming to their corporate beat, when Vanathi S got the call that would plot the new map for her life. She left behind a software developer's position at Oracle that paid her a whopping Rs 30 lakh a year, moving into a world of backpacks, treks, sunrise edits, and tales that unfolded along the way.

Currently, Vanathi is a professional travel content creator with more than 1.6 lakh followers on Instagram. One year from having quit that lucrative tech job, she says it is “the most rewarding decision."

"For over a decade, I led a double life. The week was about coding, scrums, and meeting deadlines. Week-ends were when I escaped - traveling, trekking, shooting and editing into the wee hours of the morning," she says. "I ticked all the right boxes for over a decade. I got my degree, got a good job, got married, looked after my parents, saved money, purchased land, built a house. But then, somewhere down the line, it hit me-I was living my life as I should, not as I wanted.

That hustle finally got to her. Burnout set in, affecting not only her physical wellness but her passion for climbing the corporate ladder too. “The same meetings, the same sprints, the same code—it all started to feel like a loop I couldn’t escape,” she says.

“It wasn't easy to quit, but it was something I had to do,” says Vanathi. “When I did finally do it, I felt this weird sense of relief, fear, and calm that I never thought I would experience.” It meant accepting the uncertainty of finances into his life. It also brought freedom: no longer did shoots need to be slotted between appointments or editing done until midnight after work hours were over.

"Destinations, not deadlines": That would be the epithet for her life now. Mountains, unknown nooks of India-it is here that the journey of Vanathi is documented by her with the much-needed warmth-it speaks to thousands of people reading her posts from office cubicles or congested commutes. She is practical about this decision, too. If things do not work out in the years to come, she knows she could fall back upon her tech background. “What I cannot get back is this moment—the energy, the youth, the fire in me to explore the world,” she says. Social media platforms were abuzz in approval with a deluge of posts about her courage. “Welcome to the club,” one of her followers wrote. “After quitting corporate, it’s been the best decision of my life.” It is a journey that, for Vanathi at least, is not about places but the real-time recovery of time, curiosity, and guts enough to heed the small voice that calls one onto a less-worn path.