Early Sunrise, Early Sunset

About the Book

Priyanka Rastogi is a fervent explorer backed with rich experience in travel and tourism Industry from the grassroots level. As an author of ‘Early Sunrise, Early Sunset’, Priyanka opens up three treasure boxes to you, the readers. The first box reveals the beauty of the rising North East India, the seven sisters along with states of Sikkim, West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar - inside and out. The first-hand experience of the author highlights the exquisiteness of these states that lies in the simplicity of people, tribal richness and biodiversity through her short yet rooted trips. The second treasure box facilitates the hidden jewels the people - in these states. From the drivers who took her to exotic places, to strangers in homestays, hotels and restaurants, it is the people, who made it possible and gifted her a wonderful experience as a solo woman traveller. The third treasure box defines a different perspective to the ‘matrilineal society’ of North East India. Priyanka, as a mother, an entrepreneur, has beautifully reflected her observations as a woman to explore many non-familiar places. The reflections in the form of this book are Indeed a maiden attempt from her entire family. These treasure boxes are sure to bring the North-Eastern states closer to the map and help to plan your travel itineraries and budgets better.

About the Author

Since I am not a born Author, in fact, I am a traveler first and about be an Author next in that order, I would like my reader to know me from this prism. I believe all of us are born travellers as kids but each one of us realises that potential at our own time. My first blush with travel was academic more for earning a living from the industry when I joined my Post Graduate Diploma course in Travel and Tourism Management in 2002 in the historic city of Lucknow. It was a branch of India’s premier Tourism institute IITTM Gwalior and the course came true to its reputation enabling me to crack my first job in UP Government’s State Tourism Development Corporation as a Tourism Executive straight from campus. It was an unbelievable feeling of cracking the first job that too in the bureaucratic department of my native state.Though the job was on contract but it provided me the ideal launch platform with multifarious responsibilities ranging from handling back office job of tour fulfilment, sales of tour packages of UPSTDC, inquiries and even acting as tourists guide for Awadh capital. My attachment in travel as a career woman was getting more passionate and motivating. After a one and half year stint in Lucknow, I moved on the capital New Delhi into India’s state-run airline Air India as career progression. While UP was all about within state exposure this was operational fulfilment of Air India packages to leisure destinations domestic and International. It was in IHR where I got married literally not just to Incredible India’s classical tourism diversity riding on Internet and mobile wave and my husband Ankit Rastogi, co-founder of IHR and a techie turned travel entrepreneur. IHR was the place where we innovated as a small agile team and I first time got into knowing North East India through assisted sales riding on organic traffic, mobile penetration and burgeoning shift from offline to online tourism.North East region lead by me and well supported by our team, became a successful corridor within this impactful journey of IHR. I started dreaming to be there and know more about the territory lying East of India’s chicken neck. While all this happened in 2012 IHR senior team was acquired by goibibo and we all became part of a larger OTA assigned with the task of setting up hotels and holidays business shifting from Noida to Gurgaon. It was here in goibibo as part of starting a team of hotels contracting I started for East and North India for Market Manager role and went into overdrive realising my dream of traveling to this beautiful region comprising of 7 sisters and Sikkim multiple times. It was on these trips from 2012 summers to 2015 mid from Gurgaon I started closely observing the local life of North East belt. This lead to a lot of follow-up trips on personal note fuelled by the interest for the region and especially the people. My next switch from North to South to another travel online startup but bent on creating the alternate accommodation ecosystem in India named Stayzilla was instrumental in making me believe that writing a book on North East is what I should do some time in my life. Though when I shifted to Bangalore from Gurgaon in 2015 July I had never thought of the same. But it came natural as Senior Market Manager Marketplace part of East region team, travelling further into interiors of North East region, meeting thousands of house owners after conducting hundreds of Homestay meets and above all staying with plenty of native families I started forming the belief that this tribal, mystical, green and Himalayan heartland will be my playground for scribbling my thoughts in the form of a book. It was this trigger and void from the job that immediately lead me to pen down my memories of in the form of Early Sunrise, Early Sunset: Tales of a Solo Woman Traveler Across North East and East India