Life Unchained: On a High
An internet search for travel tourism companies and a couple of interviews later, she left the city for a life in the mountains.
2 min read
Bianca Mendonca quit the ramp for the mountains.
On the day before India celebrates 67 years of independence, TALK presents a few among us who have chosen to go beyond certain mindsets and societal norms to live a life that is truly liberating.
Bianca Mendonca was in the last year of graduation when she qualified for the first season of the TV show Splitsvilla. She was already used to being in the limelight as she had been modelling for a while, but being on the show changed something in her. “I started hating fame, the fact that people talk about you without knowing you at all,” she says.
So instead of pursuing a career on camera, she got herself a job at Prasoon Pandey’s Corcoise Films. But didn’t quite fit in. It was during a serendipitous scuba diving trip that she found her calling. Mendonca met a man who was enrolled in a mountaineering course. An internet search for travel tourism companies and a couple of interviews later, she left the city for a life in the mountains.
“Have you ever been to the Himalayas?” the 27-year-old asks. “When I climbed my first peak, Stok Kangiri in Ladakh, and saw the sunset, I started crying. Some people ride bikes, others drive fast cars. Climbing mountains is my high,” she says. Mendonca has worked with several travel companies, and has now gone solo as a freelance guide. She says, “The industry does not pay as much as modeling does. I have given up a lot of luxuries for this, but while I am poor in terms of money, I am much richer in experiences.”
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