We recently teamed up with LOJEL to create a fun project focused on creatives’ journeys and we spent a month sharing meaningful travel experiences submitted by our community! We were hoping to see some inspiring images and read some insightful words and, well, you can see the kinda stuff people submitted here, here, here and here. Everyone who had their story featured got hooked up with luggage from LOJEL’s Voja luggage collection and some received a bag from LOJEL’s Urbo 2 bag collection too.

For the second phase of this project we commissioned four participants to take their submissions one step further and add a layer of artwork over top of their travel photos. We’re excited to share the first of these four submissions with you now!

First up is a duo, Vancouver-based artists Hanna Lee Joshi and Abhishek Joshi are a creative couple who make work together under the name WZRD LZRD. For their submission, Abhishek shared his photos and wrote the text and Hanna created some beautiful artwork over top!

HANNA LEE JOSHI & ABHISHEK JOSHI

@hannaleejoshi + @hishimaru

Since taking the plunge to go freelance mid-last year, I’ve had a few existential crises. ‘What am I doing with my life?!’ has been a recurring question that has filled me with a sense of dread and anxiety, along side all of the freedom of the freelance life I’ve come to love. I was struggling quite a bit trying to figure out what exactly I want to do with my personal practice. Not a fun feeling to be stuck in limbo with. Like swimming the open oceans without charting a course.

Travel has the ability to profoundly shift perspective, breaking the rigidity of these thought patterns that build up from day to day life. I was on the brink of burnout right before travelling to Nepal for a month long trip for my brother’s wedding. Journeying halfway across the world from Vancouver certainly provided the much needed outlook.

The trip back to Nepal was a visceral sensory overload in so many ways that it left little room for ruminating on feeling creatively stuck. Even though I was born in Kathmandu, I have been a lifelong transplant since the age of 6, so it is always a new experience going back home. There are pangs of painful shock seeing the once green valley now bursting at the seams with overpopulation and rampant pollution. And then there is the overwhelming sense of love and inclusiveness, spending quality time and sharing delicious food and incredible hospitality with family, friends and strangers alike.

Feeling miniaturized standing amidst the highest mountains in the world and then road tripping south through treacherous narrow highways to see one horned rhinos in the wilds of the jungles. This was a journey that rollercoastered between the highs of all the sights and the lows of falling seriously ill (the bugs be strong there!). Completely paradoxical feelings in harmonious blend.

But most of all the trip was a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit. Seeing it all around in the people of Nepal, relentlessly pushing forward no matter how difficult the ordeal seemed, in a calm and collected manner. Despite dwellings that were still barely intact from the earthquake of 2015, or having to carry an entire store worth of goods on a commute to make ends meet, life moved forward.

I was reminded just how much I am in a place of privilege and that I must not take it for granted. Getting caught in a creative rut is just part of the process. A curve-ball that needs to be worked through. No matter what obstacle life throws in front of you, just keep putting one foot in front of the other.