Annapurna Mellor | Women Series
Annapurna Mellor, A photographer and co-founder of Roam Magazine speaks to Cocoa and Jasmine about her travels, inspirations and challenges.
Could you tell us about how it all started? Was there one particular journey that made you take up travel full time? What did you study and did you have a desk job ever? Did you have travellers, writers, and photographers in your circle of friends and family?
I think my passion for travel started before I was even born. My parents spent two years cycling around the world, and I was conceived in and named after the Annapurna mountain range in Nepal. They had trekked through the area and were convinced it was one of the most beautiful parts of the world.
I was born in England but spent most of my childhood living in Dubai and Australia. For holidays, we would go to places like Thailand, Sri Lanka and Fiji and I generally always had a sense of movement throughout my life. We came back to England when I was 11 and I didn’t start travelling independently until I was about 18. I moved to London and spent summers backpacking in Croatia, California and studying abroad in China. These were my first real experiences of independent travel - roughing it, living out of a backpack, sleeping in cheap hostel beds or wild camping on beaches. I fell in love with this way of life and as soon as I graduated I booked a one way ticket to Kathmandu, to trek through the mountain range I was named after and to learn more about Tibetan Buddhism. I spent a year travelling solo around Asia - from India to Myanmar to Vietnam to Mongolia. I started taking photographs during this year, which eventually led to my career today as a travel photographer.
I never had a desk job as such, but I did spend a few years after that first year doing odd jobs like teaching English in Burma and Taiwan, and working in a bar in Australia and the UK. I did whatever I could to make money, go travelling again and keep on taking photographs.
My parents are definitely avid travellers, and my dad is also a travel photographer. I have very early memories of seeing his photographs on the covers of Lonely Planet Guide Books and him always having a camera wherever we went. My mum is a great writer and my sister is too. It was never pushed for me to have a creative career though, I was pushed much more into the sciences and academic subjects. I felt very lost when I was at university because of this, and it wasn’t until I went travelling the year after that I really had the time to discover who I was and where my passions lied.
I also should point out that I don’t travel full time - I did it for a while but it’s a very hard lifestyle when trying to maintain a career, even when it’s one which is location independent. I am based in Manchester in the UK, but try to travel a lot for work, and try to do a number of long personal photography trips each year.
We see that the Himalayas is a favourite in your feed. Any particular inspiration/ stories you'd like to share? What is it about people/ the region/ landscape/ culture that you think is special.
I was fascinated by the Himalayas long before I went there. Being named after a Himalayan mountain, I constantly wondered what the area was like. As a teenager, I developed a fascination with Tibetan Buddhism, after I studied religion at college. This was another draw for me to go to Nepal and India.
I would say that the Himalayas is my favourite region of the world. The landscapes are of course breathtaking, but really it’s the people, cultures and spirituality which always draw me back. The first time I went to Nepal, I trekked to Annapurna Base Camp with my mum which was one of the best things I have done in my life. One of my favourite memories is waking up one morning, after days of mist and not seeing mountains, and suddenly the clouds had cleared and the sun shone onto Annapurna South which is one of the most beautiful mountains of the region. We scrambled out of our sleeping bags and watched the mountains come to life beneath strings of prayer flags, with chai and bowls of banana porridge. These sort of mornings when you are completely transfixed by the beauty of the earth are much heightened in the Himalayas.
During that trip, I also did my first 10-day meditation retreat at Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu, and I then went down to India where I lived for a few weeks in Dharamsala, volunteering with a Tibetan Newspaper. Over the years since I have been back to the Nepali and Indian quite a few times. Late last year I went to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh which was an incredibly special place, and in March this year, I did the Annapurna Circuit with my two sisters. It was one of the hardest, most intense and most wonderful experiences of my life. I have also been to Darjeeling and Uttarakhand in India. I would still like to see much more of the area and have such a desire to go to Ladakh, Bhutan and Tibet.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes the Himalayan region so special, it’s definitely a combination of the people, the Buddhist religion, the landscapes. But for me, I think I feel a particular kind of peace in the mountains which I don’t feel anywhere else. I feel very connected to that part of the world and feel a lot in common with the calm and quiet mindset of the people. I also cope very well at high altitude, which I think is further evidence that I was a Tibetan in my past life!
You also run an independent publication. Please share the journey of starting that. How do you manage time between travelling and publishing? Do you think with a rise in the trend of independent publishing, it is no more as curated and niche as it was 2 years ago? How would you define your travel style in 3 words? Any tips for travel microbloggers/ publishers?
I started ROAM about 2 years ago with my sister. There are a lot of independent publications now around the world, but I felt like a lot of the travel publications were focusing a lot on ‘camping in Iceland’ or ‘Van Life’, rather than what I believe really makes travel special - which is the cultures and people of the world. I wanted ROAM to fill that gap, and also to give travellers and creatives a platform to showcase their work. It’s been a gradual journey and we are still learning all the time what we want to be and how to market ROAM in the saturated world of travel media. We feel we have a place though, and our aim is to get ROAM to be a print publication, with perhaps quarterly publications.
As for tips for travel microbloggers/publishers, I would say publish what you love and what you feel passionate about. I think so many travel bloggers now go down the same road with what works and what gets lots of views, but I don’t really think those kinds of posts have any longevity. I’d much rather publish a poignant travel story or photo essay about someone's experience at a homestay in Sri Lanka or exploring the streets of Amman than another post called ‘Top 10 things to do in Paris’.
MY TRAVEL STYLE IN 3 WORDS: INDEPENDENT, CULTURAL, PHOTOGRAPHIC.
VIEW: https://www.annapurnamellorphotography.com/
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