How this traveller from London and his very ‘unusual’ travel partner quietly built a global following

Not all journeys begin with a plan or a sense of direction. Some journeys start in a far quieter way, shaped by doubt and difficulty, by the need to first find a level of stability before one can even think about making a move. Travel becomes not simply a matter of going from one place to another but a means of finding rhythm and boundaries and support.For Sidney Batty (@sidbatty on Instagram), a young man from London, this support would take a surprising form.At 19, Sid was diagnosed with OCD, depression, and social anxiety—conditions that would come to influence how he approached the world in the years that followed. He went on to attend university, but the experience was far from straightforward. A knee surgery interrupted his routine, a breakup added emotional strain, and self-doubt began to shape many of his decisions. It was a period marked less by clarity and more by the effort to simply keep moving forward.In the midst of all this, Sid had bought something small and seemingly insignificant. He had bought a duck plushie. He named it Quack. He had never intended it to be anything out of the ordinary. Just something to mark his presence in a world that seemed to be in a state of flux. A year passed. He graduated. Like many people in his position, he was at a crossroads. He had to make a choice. To step into a job or do something out of the ordinary. Sid had opted to do the latter. He had opted to travel solo. Solo travel was said to be liberating. However, it also had its share of challenges. Especially if one was dealing with anxiety. Sid approached it in his own way. He carried Quack with him.What was once a personal preference gradually took on a form. In each new location, Sid would take a picture of the little duck, sometimes against the backdrop of vast expanses of land and sometimes in the midst of bustling streets. It was a simple process but one that was repeated with consistency.This process gradually took on a form that traversed the globe. There was a picture from Bondi Beach in Australia, where the coastline stretches into long expanses of the Pacific Ocean. There was a picture from Melbourne, where the pace of life was a little slower. Then from Singapore and Dubai, where the defining feature was the scale of everything. There was a picture from Europe, where Quack was positioned against the backdrop of Paris and Rome. Further afield, there was a glimpse of the rugged beauty of Iceland, the caves of unknown territories, the quiet scenes of places such as Malta and Cambodia.At some point, Sid decided to share a part of this online. He decided to share a video of his “mental health duck.” It wasn’t presented as a grand narrative; rather, it was a simple explanation of why he brought this along and what it represented. He said he thought of deleting this soon after.He didn’t.The video had already started gaining traction. It went past the 1.4 million mark. It wasn’t only the views; the response to this was also notable. People related to the idea, not the object per se, but to what it represented. Something to hold onto while navigating unfamiliar terrain. And so, it influenced the next part of the story. Sid continued to talk about his experiences while traveling, and Quack remained by his side.The uniqueness of the story lies not in the experience of traveling with something, but in the new perspective it creates for the concept of support.Places such as Bondi, Paris, Iceland, and New York are also important. However, they do not form the crux of the story. Instead, they serve as part of the journey, and the journey is not defined by the places, but by the movement.And Quack, the most 'unusual' of travel companions, is present throughout the story, not as something meant for others to see, but as something that enabled the journey in the first place.