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Indian super-commuter who travelled 200 km every day for work says ‘I am the sole earner in family’
22-year-old Khushi Srivastava shared her experience of a taxing commute to her MNC job from Kanpur to Lucknow.
A ‘super commuter’ techie has opened up about her long journey to office every day and how she managed to juggle it with her passion for content creation. Khushi Srivastava works for a top MNC from their office in Lucknow. However, for nearly five months, she took a train every day from her hometown Kanpur to reach Lucknow — where she would then hop onto an autorickshaw to reach her office.
The entire journey — getting to the railway station in Kanpur, the train from Kanpur to Lucknow, and then the autorickshaw to her office in Lucknow — covered a distance of about 98-100 km one way, Srivastava told HT.com. To work from office five days a week, the techie travelled 200 km every day, going from Kanpur to Lucknow and back again.
Khushi Srivastava documented her arduous daily commute in an Instagram Reel that has been going viral on the platform.
Commuting from Kanpur to Lucknow
In a conversation with HT.com, 22-year-old Srivastava explained that she landed a job at an MNC right after graduating from college with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Applications.
After graduating in 2024, she did her training in Chennai and was then posted in Kerala. “I could not work in Kerala, I wanted to be closer to my family,” she told HT.com. “I am the sole breadwinner, and my mother was suffering from many health problems.”
Her family — consisting of her mother and her elder brother — was based in Kanpur.
Srivastava jumped through several hoops to obtain a transfer to the company’s Lucknow office. Finally, in February 2025, her transfer was approved.
Then came another problem — that of commuting from Kanpur to Lucknow every day.
The long journey to work
To make the journey, Srivastava would wake up between 5.30 to 6 am every morning, five days a week. This would allow her to reach the railway station just in time to catch the intercity express to Lucknow.
The train would leave Kanpur around 7.30 am every day. “I would wake up around 5.30 every day to get ready for work. I was also juggling the job with content creation, so sometimes I would shoot in the mornings before leaving for office,” said Srivastava, who has 18,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts under the handle @misskhushi_210.
“I would leave my house around 6.40 and reach the station by 7.10 am. The train would reach Lucknow around 9 am,” said the techie.
After disembarking at Lucknow’s Charbagh Railway Station, the software engineer would take an autorickshaw to her office in Gomti Nagar — a distance of around 15 km.
After reaching her office, she would complete a nine-hour shift before again leaving for the railway station and catching a train back to Kanpur.
The long commute meant that Srivastava rarely reached home before 11 pm. Exhausted, she would fall asleep quickly, only to get up and repeat the whole process again the next morning.
The cost of travelling
A monthly train pass cost Srivastava ₹300. A shared auto from Charbagh to Gomti Nagar cost her ₹40 every day.
Effectively, a one-way journey to the office cost her ₹55 every day. While the commute was not expensive, it came at the very real cost of her health and mental peace.
(Also read: This 24-year-old moved from Delhi to Manali and now lives on just ₹25,000 a month)
“The commute was not expensive, but it was very hectic. I had no time for myself,” Srivastava said. “I had absolutely no work-life balance. There was barely enough time to eat well, much less pursue hobbies or have leisure time.”
“I had to do content creation. And then I had to look after my family. And, of course, there was the pressure of work,” she said.
Moving to Lucknow
For nearly five months, Srivastava followed this punishing schedule. In June, she finally decided to move to Lucknow.
Moving cities presented another challenge — house-hunting. Srivastava and a friend spent every weekend roaming the bylanes of Lucknow for suitable accommodation.
Finally, they found a room in the Chinhat area where she now lives with her mother. The room has an attached washroom and kitchen.
Salary, rent and other expenses
“The rent comes to around ₹4,500 per month,” Srivastava told HT.com. “My mother lives with me because I don’t have a father and she has myriad health issues. That was the reason I took a transfer from Kerala to Lucknow – so I could look after my mother.”
Srivastava says that moving from Kanpur to Lucknow has not helped her expenses go down, but she is happier without the long commute.
“To be very honest, my salary is not very high. I am a fresher,” she said candidly. “I spend around ₹5,000 every month on rent and electricity. And then there is the cost of groceries.”
Commuting to work also presents another expense. “But my salary is sufficient. We manage,” says Srivastava.
What has helped her is content creation as a secondary source of income. Srivastava told HT.com that she has set up a shooting corner in her rented accommodation.
“I have been able to earn money from content creation. My YouTube channel is already monetized, and I am about to receive my third payment from there,” she said. “Through Instagram, I have also been able to land brand collaborations.”
