Coding on The Big Banyan Tree

Inside the Codebase: Building Travelogue

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:58:25 +0530

In my previous blog, I wrote about why I built Travelogue and the overall approach I took to build it. In this post, I’ll dive deeper into the technical decisions behind the project and share how I used AI as both a sounding board and a collaborator throughout the journey. To be clear, I didn’t write the code myself. AI generated the code, and my role was to iterate on it until it matched the product I envisioned for my own use.

I Did Not Vibecode This Travel Journal

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 18:46:55 +0530

Over the past one and a half years, my husband and I have taken two international trips, visiting nearly ten cities across different countries. The knowledge I’ve gained and the experiences I’ve had during these journeys are both vast and deeply personal. They are the kind of memories worth preserving.

During our first trip to Germany, I carried a notebook with the intention of jotting down my thoughts and experiences as we explored each city. To my credit, I managed to fill several pages during the first few days. However, writing by hand felt slow and unfamiliar, as I’m far more accustomed to typing. By the end of the trip, I had documented only about half the cities we visited, and even those entries felt vague and superficial. I couldn’t fully capture the places I had seen, the food I had tasted, or the countless little moments that made the journey memorable.

Hugo Commands

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 18:20:01 +0530

I designed my blog using Hugo, and I use Hugo commands frequently to keep it updated. I’ve compiled a list of the Hugo commands I use most often and published it here in the Notes section for my own reference and record-keeping

hugo


hugo new blog/post-title.md  // to publish a new blog post
hugo new notes/notes-title.md  //to publish a new note
hugo server  //to start the local server where I can view all my changes
hugo server -D // local server environment where I can see the draft changes as well

Below are the git commands to push my changes to production:

hugo


git add . 
git commit -m "commit title"
git push origin main 
git log --oneline  //to see recent commits
git diff // to see the exact changes
git status   //to check what's changed