For 14 days, Aryaan Misra—founder of Desi Studios and co-host of the Desi Crime Podcast—embarked on an atypical journey. From January 8 to January 22, he lived aboard a cargo carrier ship, sailing from Terneuzen, Netherlands, to Tornio, Finland, through the rough waters of the Baltic Sea. That too, in the winter. 
The catch? He was the only non-crew passenger and had voluntarily severed all ties with the digital world—no internet, no notifications, no endless scrolling. Not even a phone connection. Just books, his thoughts, and the open sea—and seasickness. A lot of it.

But why?

“It had been on my bucket list for a while,” Misra says. “Before the pandemic, it was easier to board a cargo ship as a non-crew passenger, but post-lockdown, it became much more restrictive. After some research, I found a way to make it happen and eventually secured a spot through a port in Belgium.”