London Diaries didn’t begin in London.
It began in Mumbai at 2am.
A girl sitting in silence with a laptop balanced in front of her, scrolling endlessly through tuition fees, visa videos, accommodation reviews, part-time job forums, and Reddit threads written by strangers who had somehow found the courage to leave home and start over abroad.
That girl was me.
And every night, I kept asking myself the same question:
Can I really build a life somewhere so far away from everything I’ve ever known?
Because moving abroad sounds beautiful when people talk about it.
They show you pictures of London lights, university campuses, coffee shops, winter outfits, and weekend trips. But nobody really talks about the part where you leave behind the version of yourself that felt safe.
Nobody talks about the fear.
The loneliness.
The guilt of watching your parents spend their savings on your dreams.
The pressure of knowing failure is not an option because too many people are counting on you.
A few months later, I packed my life into two suitcases and moved to the UK as an international student at Brunel University London.
And honestly?
Nothing prepares you for how overwhelming it feels in the beginning.
I still remember landing in London and feeling excitement and panic at the same time. Everything was unfamiliar. The weather. The people. The silence. Even simple things suddenly felt difficult, from opening a bank account, understanding rent, learning the Tube, figuring out groceries on a student budget, pretending you’re okay when you’re actually homesick beyond words.
There were days I felt completely lost.
Days I missed home so much that even hearing Hindi in public felt comforting.
Days where balancing studies, work, responsibilities, and survival felt heavier than I expected.
But somewhere between the struggle, something changed in me.
The girl who arrived in London was quiet, shy, and unsure of herself.
The version of me sitting in Mumbai could never have imagined the person I would become here.
Because this city forces you to grow.
Not all at once. Slowly. Quietly.
Through every hard conversation.
Every rejection.
Every missed train.
Every shift you work being exhausted.
Every moment you figure something out alone and realise you’re stronger than you thought.
Over time, I stopped waiting for life to happen to me.
I became independent.
Confident.
Resilient.
I graduated from Brunel University London, but the degree is only one part of the story.
The real story is everything it took to survive this journey emotionally, financially, mentally, and still come out stronger on the other side.
Today, my life looks very different from the one I imagined back then.
Not perfect. Not glamorous. But better.
More peaceful.
More stable.
More mine.
And somewhere along the way, I realised something important:
I wasn’t the only girl sitting awake at 2 am searching for answers.
There are thousands of students dreaming about moving abroad right now, scared, confused, excited, overwhelmed, trying to understand what this life actually looks like beyond the filtered Instagram posts and polished university marketing.
That’s why I started London Diaries.
Not to romanticise London.
But to tell the truth about it.
The beautiful parts and the brutal ones.
The loneliness nobody warns you about.
The growth nobody can explain until you experience it yourself.
The small victories that slowly become a life.
This blog is for every international student trying to build a future far away from home.
For the people silently struggling while pretending they’re okay.
For the ones who are scared to take the leap.
And for the ones already here, trying every day to make this city feel like home.
London Diaries exists because I know what it feels like to search for honesty and only find perfection.
So here, you’ll get the real story instead.
Not from an expert.
Not from an agency.
Just from a girl who came to London with two suitcases, a thousand doubts, and a dream big enough to carry her through all of it.
And somehow, against all odds, made it.
— Samruddhi Dawkhar
