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.