Miss Walking Shoes

YOUNG WOMAN TRAVELER holding an INDIAN PASSPORT exploring the world on HER OWN for more than a YEAR. That’s me!!

World traveler, experience collector, adventure seeker, culture vulture, foodie, budget traveler and believer of serendipity and happy endings. Ah well! that’s me again.

A big Hello! I am Leena Bansal aka Miss Walking Shoes. I quit my job in April 2014 and since then I am on the journey of my life. I have traveled to 28 countries across three continents in this time (from May, 2014 to May, 2015). All this while, I have traveled 79,827 kilometers (49604 miles) - this distance is roughly equivalent to circling the Earth twice!

Trekking up the Himalayas, deep sea diving in Atlantic Ocean, climbing Mayan Pyramids to paragliding up in the air, camping on roadside with gypsies, bumping into my look - alike in Berlin (really!!!), losing my camera lens, almost dying of snake bite twice, climbing active volcano in Indonesia, and witnessing two natural disasters - cyclone in Gili Islands and Nepal earthquake were just a few of things that has happened to me in the last twelve months.

All these travels were self funded and self organized. I traveled on budget using overland transportation when traveling within a continent, shared rooms with unknown travelers in the dormitories (YES!! Queen Style), and cooked my meals (wherever possible). You will find it really interesting that I'm a vegetarian and I managed to stay that way all this while.

How it all started?

As far as I remember, I always wanted to travel and see all that is wonderful and not so wonderful in the world. My 9 year old self told my teacher that my dream is to go to Antarctica when most of my classmates told about dreams of becoming doctors, engineers and astronauts. She laughed off by saying that you can't go there, no human being can go there. To which I said, “that’s why I want to go there and also I want to go to moon and also travel in space.” After the class, many of my curious classmates asked me about my plans, how I will go there and what will I do there etc etc. Since then most discussions with my friends are about travels and places.

I traveled overseas for the first time when I was nineteen and I found the travel to be too expensive and my dream quite unaffordable. The only way I figured out was to study hard, get high paying job and travel.

I started working as an advertising professional and was quite happy wi