Hitchhiking in India

Tentative plan

A lot of our friends are asking us for our exact itinerary and when we are leaving. Do have a little patience, we’ll be out with the details soon. Not in real deep detail, but we plan to have only a high level guide/schedule, we’ll be winging it mostly. Our tentative date of departure from Hyderabad is 5th of May. We plan to take a train to Kolkota and then a bus or train to Siliguri. Our adventure will start from here.

We’ll be out with more details soon, keep watching this space!

Here’s a piece of news which reminded us again that it’s not just a joyride we’re going on - 125 dead in storm in WB, Bihar and Assam.

— Ajay

We heart our Right to Walk!

All of us, who live in or have lived in cities know how hard it is to be a pedestrian. It is almost a rarity to find a footpath (sidewalk or pavement) along a road. And, if there is one, a pedestrian has to compete with streetside vendors, garbage strewn around and stinking walls (because of people using them as public toilets). It is common to see vehicles driving on the “foot”path during rush hour too (at least in Hyderabad). It is unfortunate that one of the first things that our city planners propose in order to ease traffic congestion is widening of roads. Any guesses how they achieve that? Right, they tear up the footpaths first. Little do they realize that this will only lead to more accidents and congestion because of pedestrians having to walk on the roads. This also means that all the trees on the sides of the road will be cut and driving on the road will be as enjoyable as cruising in a preheated oven. 

How is all this related to our trip? Hey, if there are no sidewalks, where are hitchhikers supposed to ask for rides from! And if we don’t get rides, we will have to walk, right? And we need a sidewalk to walk on, right?

We are proud to be endorsed and supported by the Right to Walk Foundation (the website is down right now, will be up in a day or two). Right to walk has been a fearless champion of pedestrian rights in Hyderabad and has been trying to ensure that pedestrian rights are upheld. The foundation has been filing RTI (Right to Information) petitions to make sure that the civic authorities are held accountable too. Can you believe that the municipal corporation and the R&B (roads & buildings) department have both been trying to wash their hands off maintaining the existing pavements in Hyderabad? If you want to stop this shirking of responsibility, you have to act too!

Support the R2W foundation and help in every way you can!

If you think this is a noble idea, do try it in your own city.

— Ajay R

What are we doing apart from Hitchhiking?

So what are we planning to do while we travel?

We are flashpacking a bit with our gadgets to make blogging, tweeting, photography and podcasting possible.

These are the activities which we plan to do while we travel:

• Record folk and tribal music
• Put our amateur photography skills to test and try to capture the beauty of the North East in our camera lens
• Live blog the journey experiences on this blog
• Tweet our journey all the way
• Mark our entire journey by the GPS coordinates and put the routes up on TripNaksha
• Release podcasts regularly which deal with the travel experiences and destination details
• Last but not the least, immerse ourselves in the culture that the north east has to offer.

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About the HitchHikers

Inder:

A normal IT Employee who recently quit the corporate job, to pursue his dreams. Apart from losing a regular fat paycheque he also lost his entire data on his laptop and the blog which he was writing from last 4 years, yet he proclaims that he has started a new life and feels good about it. He loves anything remotely related to Adventure  and feels that he will discover a whole new life with this trip.
You can find more about him in these places:

Blog:         http://blog.indersen.com
Twitter (@indersen): http://www.twitter.com/indersen
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/indersen
Linkedin:   http://in.linkedin.com/in/indersen

Ajay:

An ex-techie, he quit his job nearly 2 years back to become an entrepreneur. He currently runs the website www.TripNaksha.com through which he is trying to promote adventure travel in India. An electrical engineer by education, his current work is nowhere related to what he studied in college. He loves running and reading science fiction.

Blog:        http://prescient-quiescent.blogspot.com/
Twitter (@ajaymreddy): http://www.twitter.com/ajaymreddy
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ajay.reddy
Linkedin:   http://in.linkedin.com/in/ajaymohanreddy

Why are we doing this?

Why travel?

Many people say that they travel because they want to broaden their horizons or because they want to experience a culture. I do too, but I also have a couple of reasons which are more important than these - I love meeting people, and I love meeting people who are different from me. I think places are just places, they would be the same as any other - if not for the people. I am not talking about the weather and other natural/geographic features - but about the character of a place. Yes, the geographic location affects the people in many ways but I am interesting in seeing both the causes and effects.

Why North-East?

Why not!

It is one of the least commercialized places in India, has beautiful landscapes, people and the summer there is definitely cooler than Hyderabad, where we are both from.

Why hitchhiking?

Well, we’re both out of work and we’ve got nothing better to do.

No, not really. We want to dispel a couple of notions - that adventure travel is not possible in India and that Indians are not intrepid travelers themselves. And so we thought, why not hitchhike? It’s not an easy thing to do - and we love doing things that are not easy to do!

Also, hitchhiking is entirely about people unlike riding bikes or motorcycles, where it is the machine and it’s various tantrums which is in focus.

And the final question - why only Rs. 150 per day?

Oh well, we being out of work, don’t have a lot of money you see - and financial projections are the first thing any entrepreneur is supposed to know. With the Rs. 150 target spend per day, we can’t go very wrong, can we?

And, Rs. 150 is just about enough to cover our expenses on food (and water in Inder’s case) - so we will be forced to do what we have planned to - hitchhike!

Is that all?

No, there’s more! We plan to record local folk and tribal music along our journey and later publish it for all to enjoy. Also, Ajay plans to do 10k runs in each of the capital cities of the 7 states.

Hitchhiking the North-East at Rs. 150 per day!

The North-East of India - a region bestowed with amazing diversity - in terms of culture, language, custom and way of life. A region isolated from mainland India, but symbolizing the very core of Indian-ness - diversity. A region of unspoilt natural beauty and signature music.

Follow Inder and Ajay as the two city slickers attempt to hitchhike their way across the 7 north eastern states of India. Join them as they journey to capture the essence of the North-East in its local music. On the way, they will try to do what they love the most - after their love for traveling - click pictures and run! And all this, without crossing a per capita expenditure limit.

Can they do it? They don’t know either, but they sure intend to find out.