Travel blogger Larissa D’sa takes us through her digital journey

Twinkle Dharmani

An iGTV video posted on Instagram served as the trailer to her travel blog series on Banaras and garnered as many as 76.1k views. In this video, 27-year-old digital content creator Larissa D’Sa delights her viewers by reciting a Hindi prose on the mysticism of one of the world’s oldest Indian cities, Varanasi. Next up, striking background music adds depth to the visual scenery of the ghats, the holy Ganga and the beautiful mesmerising Ganga aarti.

This sneak-peak video’s longer version, a YouTube series on Banaras got D’Sa 63k plus likes, a number that might put some large-crew travel shows to shame.

LuxeBook gets D’Sa — 416k followers on Instagram and 396k subscribers on YouTube —to share her trade secrets and talk about how she portrays and presents a destination to garner so much interest from her viewers.

D’Sa ventured into the online world in 2012 with her e-commerce venture We Love Customade, which sold customised t-shirts, phone cases and wall murals. About four years ago, she decided to do more on the world wide web space and started making blogs and vlogs on her travels. Since then she has been to almost 30 foreign destinations such as the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Scotland, and over 20 in India including Nagaland, Kolkata and Coorg. Soon, her eponymous YouTube channel became a humongous hit and she became a sought-after name for many brands such as Kaya, Singapore Airlines and GoPro.

A road less taken

What seems to work for D’Sa is the way she highlights the not-sopopular and unique aspects of a place that reflect its culture. “When I visited London for the first time, I didn’t visit the Tower bridge until it was my last day. I don’t have a picture with the London Eye either.” Instead, in her video, she shows her viewers the vintage shops in Camden town, her experience at Tate Modern, a modern art gallery, and the vibrant wall graffiti of Bricklane.

Local flavours

D’Sa believes that the essence of a place is its people, its sounds and its culture. Hence, she always includes her conversations with locals in her videos. “People living in a place always have more to offer than any blogs or YouTube videos,” she says. And the places she enjoys the most are those that give her a culture shock and a whole new perspective. She also tries to learn the local languages to get under the skin of the place. She learnt Spanish through an online course so she could comprehend the language of the country and get a better sense of the place.

Keeping it real

On social media, an informal platform, it’s best to keep it true and meaningful. D’Sa never shies away from talking about her bad days and experiences in her vlogs. This, she says, appeals to her viewers and makes her more relatable. “The fact that I also share my vulnerabilities makes the audience think that I’m just another girl who has her share of sorrows too.” She also likes to keep it as natural as possible. “Things just flow” once she starts to narrate her experience. Most of her travel videos are non-scripted but do require a lot of post-production work. However, when necessary, she also scripts some of her content.

Picture perfect

D’Sa also clicks several photographs of her trips for Instagram. Only six to ten of 50 odd, well-shot pictures make it to her channel and the rest are uploaded on her alternative photography page beyond.larissa. Pictures that capture a play of shadow and light are her favourite.

Whether its photographs or videos, D’Sa puts in a lot of effort, thought and research to produce interesting, engaging content, something that she thoroughly enjoys. Her advice for aspiring bloggers is to travel as much as possible. “Focus on that one thing about travel that interests you. It could be food, tourist spots, people or off-beat places. There’s no right or wrong way to travel and there is a tonne of ways to enjoy it.”

Some of her favourite trips are those that teach her life lessons like the ones she learnt in Banaras and Scotland. Her trip to Banaras made her see life in the most magical and unique way, in the light of its spirituality and rituals. “It’s something one can only experience,” says D’Sa.

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