India's top travel bloggers by traffic/readership (Similarweb pageviews)

There're many top blogger, top travel blogger lists. I have been fortunate to be on few and I was given a miss on several others. Each of these top travel blog listings have their own way of identifying and selecting top blogs but these selection criteria are often not disclosed. It could be based on perceived popularity (which is subjective), it could be based on whatever research concerned person could do within limited time, expertise he/she may have, it could be based on some metrics or it could be personal choice of person who compiled the list. Some top blogger lists are simply recycled list of another already published list with minor changes. Usually we don't have a way to know how many bloggers were evaluated, on what criteria before final top blogger list is published.

Many a times top blogger lists are published by websites that have no authority or expertise, as part of their strategy to get more publicity and visibility when the bloggers share their list in their self-triumph.

One of the major criteria to decide which blogger is popular is the traffic or readership. If more people are visiting the blog and reading the content, it should be good. There're many tools to measure this- most popular being Google Analytics- but GA is private- you can't access someone else's traffic details. Similarweb.com is another popular tool using which you can see key metrics of any website. So I have used this tool for this top blogger listing. Of course there will be some differences in numbers shown by different tools-most probably Google Analytics stats will be higher than Similarweb. Also to be noted page views are hard to fake compared to follower counts.

Without further delay, let us take a look at top travel bloggers of India, based on traffic (monthly page-views) their blogs get. I have analysed over 131 blogs for this study, checked their stats on similarweb.com and then identify top blogs based on maximum monthly page views.

#1 Anna Phipps
Anna Phipps tops my list of top Indian travel bloggers by traffic with more than 1.2 lakh monthly pageviews. She hails from UK but her blog has good focus on India, Asia and Australia. I haven't met or interacted with her yet, hopefully some day.

2. Anuradha Goyal- Inditales
Anuradha Goyal has been blogging and traveling since decades before travel blogging became fashion. She has authored few books-including The Mouse Charmers. Based in Goa, her Inditales has lots of authentic travel stores to read. With close to 1 lakh monthly pageviews, she is at #2 in my list.

3. Shalu Sharma
Shalu Sharma's blog is full of travel tips, guides for visiting India. Very useful for tourists planning to visit India. With about 80000 pageviews a month as per similar web, Shalu Sharma at #3 on my list of top Indian travel bloggers as per readership.

4. Shivya Nath
Shivya Nath, of The Shooting Star, needs no introduction and tops almost every listing of top travel bloggers. Purely because similarweb puts her pageviews at 76000 per month and I found 3 people having higher pageviews, she ranks at #4 on my list.

5. Lakshmi Sharath
Based in Bengaluru, Lakshmi Sharath is former media professional and now full time traveler. She also needs no introduction and I am glad I could interact with her on few occasions. Do check her blog which is at #5 on my list with close to 40000 pageviews as per similarweb.

6. Shrinidhi Hande (me!)
You will probably blast me for putting self on the top blogger list created by myself. But my list is purely based on the numbers derived from a respected tool and open for everyone to verify. I don't have any great following on FB/Insta/Twitter and my strength always has been my blog. Into 14th year of blogging with over 26000 posts and counting, my blog traffic as per similarweb is about 37000 a month as of now. Blogger stats is 3 times this number with about a lakh pageviews a month- but then, GA/blogger stats will be proportionately higher for everyone on this list, just that we don't have a public access to check it.

Do read my blog posts. I believe you will find them useful.

7. Soumya Nambiar- Travel books food
Soumya's blog has several detailed guides which are very helpful during your planning.

8. Siddhartha Joshi- Sid The Wanderer
Siddhartha Joshi is a medical designer and avid traveler and travel photographer. I have been fortunate to travel with him on couple of trips-Suryagarh. Do check his blog and instagram

9. Ashwini Neetan- The hopping miles
Ashwini is based in Bengaluru and writes on her blog, the hopping miles. Have met her once last year when we went on a road trip in a Volvo. Recently she and her family were on a long road trip to the Himalayas.

10. Jitadiya Narzary- Traveling Slacker
Jitaditya's Traveling Slacker was originally missed- my bad. Better late than never.

11. Poorna and Brinda- Travel TwoSome
Again from Bengaluru, Poorna and Brinda run a well read travel blog, Traveltwosome.

12. Mridula Dwivedi- Travel Tales from India
Mridula is also a very well known name in India's travel blogging community. She is based in NCR and blogs at Travel Tales from India

13. Ami Bhat- Thrilling Travel
Ami Bhat is a popular travel blogger based in Bengaluru. Her blog Thrilling Travel is at #12 on my list.

14. Shubham Mansingka
Shubham has been undertaking travel and travel writing full time since 5+ years and blogs at Travel Shoe Bum.

15. Prasad N P- desi Traveler
Prasad N P, aka Desi Traveler is a respected name in the community. Happy to have been together on couple of trips/events. Based in NCR, his monthly calendars are also very popular.

16. Umang Trivedi- Travel Max
Umang Trivedi now works full time with Oyo Rooms. He also runs a popular travel blog, travel max

17. Sankara Subramanian- Be on the road
Sankara Subramanian is also based in Bengaluru and is another old timers in the travel blogging community. He runs his own travel consulting, enjoys motorcycle rides and runs the Be On the Road blog. I met him decades ago first in Tata Nano Superdrive.

18. Aarti S- My Yatra Diary
Mumbai based Aarti writes My Yatra Diary- detailed travel stories from her road trips, spiritual journeys.

19. Seema Gurnani- Panda Reviewz
Seema runs Panda Reviewz, a popular food and travel blog, based out of Vijayawada

20. Manjulika Pramod-Pendown
Manjulika writes at Pendown covering travel, food and art

21. Anamika Mishra
Anamika Mishra is an author with two books to her credit- Voice Mates and For the sake of love. Not a full time traveler like many featured above but she has her set of travel stories to share.

22. Reshma Narsing- Solo Globetrotter
Reshma Narsing is based in Bengaluru and runs Solo Globetrotter

23. Sandeepa Chetan
Sandeepa and Chetan, travel couple based in Pune have several exciting travel stores in their blog, covering the world ranging from South America to New Zealand. Check SandeepaChetan.com

Some observations:

• Most of the well read travel bloggers are women. Only 6-7 men among the top 22 well read travel bloggers
• At least 8 of the 22 are based in Bengaluru with NCR taking #2 spot in terms of locations where these bloggers are based. Rest are spread around the country.

Most bloggers have also diversified into other domains these days- twitter, instagram, youtube etc to be in sync with latest trends or wherever they see higher opportunities and potential. This is perfectly fine and natural. The focus of my analysis and subsequent top blogger list is purely based on blog's traffic and doesn't consider the influence a person may have on other platforms.  If this doesn't suit your narrative I am sorry. Please feel free to make your own list.

Points to note:

• Bloggers of Indian Origin but right now are known to have settled abroad are excluded from this list. (Ankita Sinha, Swati Sam, Bhushavali, Dheeraj Sharma etc)
• Bloggers with India connection but primary readership is in other country like USA are excluded (otherwise Rachel Jones and Mariellen Ward had amazing rank and traffic but for USA)
• Group or community blogs which don't have a single (or max couple) owner are also excluded
• Rankings and numbers vary w.r.t time. These numbers are as noted during June last week/July 1st week 2019. Please don't be offended if numbers have moved up or down by few hundred or even thousands when you check. I don't have any means to keep updating this list dynamically based on changed numbers, but will make an attempt to update the list once in 6 months or an year. 
• I have evaluated over 131 bloggers for this, but it is still possible I might have missed someone with very good traffic. If you can think of such names, do comment (please check their blog on similarweb.com to ensure it has more pageviews than listed above and it is India based travel blog). I will try to incorporate in subsequent updates. 

I know this list doesn't include many of my own travel blogger friends who have very good blog. The results were purely driven by the number shown on the tool- no personal judgment is done. Sorry if you are missed out. Do focus on your blog by writing regularly and promoting it well. Best wishes.

Any feedback or comments always welcome.

Update: Many feel that similarweb is not the most accurate source and everyone see a higher number on their Google analytics. I too agree this is true- please use your discretion, additional scrutiny before using this list for any purposes. If there's a better, more accurate free tool that can be used to measure traffic of any website please share. I can use it for future update. (Google Analytics is good but is private- unless site owner shares access/screenshot we won't know). Right now the assumption is even if Similarweb reading is less, the difference will be proportionate to everyone hence no harm in using as a reference.

Please use your own discretion w.r.t. quality of blog posts- it won't be fair on my part, being a blogger myself, to say this blogger is good, that blogger's quality is not good. Numbers shown on Similarweb is the only criteria used for this list. If you're not comfortable with this approach you're free to ignore this list and refer several other top blogger lists available on the net.

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