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Srinivas Rao

Srinivas is an avid surfer and personal development blogger at The Skool of Life. He's also the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast for bloggers.

8 Essential Items that Long Term Travelers Should Look for When They Rent an Apartment

If you are a longer traveler or minimalist digital nomad, there’s a good chance you’re traveling on a budget and trying to keep things as simple as possible.  It’s no secret that renting an apartment and staying at a destination longer is a more cost effective way to do things.  But, before you throw down your hard earned cash for your  pad in paradise, there a few essential items that you should make sure the apartment has. I’m speaking based on the experience of living in an apartment that was lacking most of these things.

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7 Signs That You’re Truly an Expat

After 4 months of being on the road in one country, I’ve realized I’m not really a tourist or traveler any more, but  I’m an expat.  While there are moments that I think I’ve lost my mind and wish for all the things we take for granted in the USA, I know that living any other way would make me feel like I’m missing out on all that life has to offer. There’s just far too to much of the world to see to spend the majority of my life in one country. But in no particular order here are  my own personal signs that you’ve become an expat:

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Mistaken Identity, Bus Schedules and the Pura Vida Spirit

One of the the interesting things about being an Indian guy who is living or traveling in Central or Latin America is that I’m constantly mistaken for a local.  Most gringos who see me start conversations with me in Spanish. A few days ago a girl in the water who has been living here in Costa Rica for 3 years turns to me and tells me in Spanish that the waves were closing out fast. I agreed in Spanish assuming she was a local. A few minutes later I heard her talking in an American accent and realized that she had mistaken for me a local because of my dark skin.  This wasn’t the first instance in which a gringo assumed I was a local. In fact anytime a gringo sees me they start the conversation in Spanish because they figure I must speak Spanish.  It’s always amusing to see the look on their face when I say “hey, what’s up?”  When I lived in Brazil for 6 months, even though I was hanging out with 5 other foreigners, the Brazilians all assumed I was Brazilian, which is funny considering anybody could pass for Brazilian given the melting pot that Brazil is. In fact I met somebody who told me the Brazilian passport is the world’s most sought after passport because you could put any picture on it, and it would pass.

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Things We Take for Granted in the USA

I’ve spent the last two months out of the country and within hours of landing in New York City, I started to realize just how much we take for granted when we live in the United States. My life in Costa Rica has been full of days that test my patience . 10 hours after I landed in New York, I came to one conclusion: “I can get more done in 24 hours in the USA than I can in one week in Costa Rica.”

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Difficult Goodbyes

Friendships With Tourists

When you’re an expat or a long term traveler, the hardest thing you experience is saying goodbye to the people who come and go. As we drank our coffee and watched waves pour in, I felt a sense of emptiness knowing that a friend who I had been surfing with every single day for the last two weeks was returning home. He was the first close friend I’d had since I left home.  Knowing that people are going to come and go and my life will be a revolving door of friendships for an extended period of time is discomforting. I can’t help but wonder when the next close friend will arrive and how long they’ll stay. I can’t help but wonder how I’ll feel when they leave again.  It’s one of many difficult goodbyes that come with being a traveler.

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Lost Souls Living in Paradise

When people take a vacation, it seems to be a temporary escape from the noise and nonsense of everyday life. But when people leave home and  join the ranks of expats, it’s a completely different experience.  Our very own Lauren rains even questioned if world travelers are running from something. Maybe we’re running from  a life that doesn’t quite measure up to our childhood dreams in hopes to find a way get back in touch with our inner child.  Maybe we figure we’ll find answers or the love of our life on the road. Whatever it is, it’s safe to say that there are many lost souls living in paradise.

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Patience, Perspective, and Insignificance

The world is a pretty interesting place when you start to venture outside your own backyard. Once you unplug from your every day life you start to realized just how privileged the the lives we lead are.  In my first glimpse into the life of a digital nomad I mentioned just how difficult adjusting to life in a new country can be, but it was all about my problems and issues. Saturday morning I woke up eager to hit the beach for an early surf session and found that that ATV I’m renting wouldn’t start again. I almost launched into a series of four letter expletives, but for some reason this time it didn’t have the annoying impact it did before. I realized that this was just part of life here in Costa Rica. So I walked down to the mechanic and asked him if he could come see what was wrong and he said sure.  The funniest thing about the whole experience is that the guy had been letting me struggle in my broken Spanish even though he spoke English, just so I would learn faster.

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The Draw of Nature’s Spectacle

Back in the Spring of ’08, my then-fiancée Jenny and I took a month-long European vacation. Many firsts happened on that trip: Neither of us had been to Europe before, and this was also the first test of our ability to be around each other 24/7 for any length of time. Over the month we hit a few cities and towns in Italy, Paris for a week, London, stayed with friends in Oxford, then wrapped it up with a couple of days in Ireland. By the last day, both of us were pretty tired and had planned to tool around along the boardwalk in a little suburb just outside of Dublin where we were staying.

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The Solitude and Soul of the the Long Term Traveler


The days are long and the nights are short. This 100 person town of mine is far from the hustle and bustle of the Los-Angelisms I’ve become accustomed to. The sounds of my fingers tapping against the keyboard , the occasional car driving by, and rustling leaves are all I seem to hear on many days.  Yet somehow I’m starting to find comfort in my solitude even though I wonder if it’s like this for all long term travelers. Do they miss home? Do they get homesick? Do they spend more time alone than they thought they would?  If that’s the case, then why do it? Perhaps it’s the stories we’ll have that will last beyond a lifetime because we’re the types who will always choose a life made of experiences instead over one made of possessions.

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3 Steps to Language Hacking with Google Translate

As I deal with day to day life here in Costa Rica, I find myself needing to understand more and more things in Spanish. It’s true that we live in a world today where we can literally learn anything online.  While there’s no doubt that a few language tapes and courses would help ,I’m finding Google translate to be quite a good Spanish teacher. Fluency is definitely a goal of mine during my time here in Costa Rica, but I also have to deal with situations today and using Google translate has been helping to improve my Spanish rapidly.

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