All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
I still have so many stories to share from my 125 plus countries, and all deserts, forests and the other biomes all around the world. But somehow I feel that I should now also write about few of my Indian adventures before we go into the world again, since a lot of my travels here shaped me into the type of traveller I am today. And by ‘adventures in India’ I assure you I won’t count a trip to Kutch, Kerala, Kashmir or any tiger reserve as one. It’s not as if I haven’t been to all these (and all were amazing) but in the next few features I will present the really less heard of locations which are probably more rewarding than the much advertised ‘adventures’.
Basically since the past decade or so we have travelled quite a bit across India but it wasn’t always so. Someone asked me in 2017, after we had returned from the Arctic (Greenland), as to why we hadn’t travelled as extensively in our own country? I pondered on it and maybe the answer was that for the first decade of my international travel (2007 to 2017) I was so hungry to see the planet, that I just couldn’t stop going to far flung parts of the Earth and trying to learn about the whole wide world. In 2010 Richa and I got married and she also caught this ‘different destination’ bug and joined my band wagon as we went on a whirlwind world tour to almost every corner of the planet (but not every nook & cranny it must be said). You see, both of us had not been outside India before 2007 (barring my living in Bhutan as a kid), so you can understand the pent up emotions of wanting to take that first international flight. But then this question in 2017 hit me like a ton of bricks or let me be a bit less dramatic and say it got my attention. After that I was clear that I wanted to see my own country too and not just keep heading off to T2 in Mumbai or T3 in Delhi at the drop of a hat. Of course our India travel didn’t start as late as 2017 because of this question. It had started long before. However from here on it was fast tracked and went into overdrive.
So way back in 2003 and upto 2007 it was travels in my own backyard of Rishikesh, Haridwar, Lansdowne, Nainital and the other usual suspects of Uttarakhand. Then later came the names I just took which were the Jaisalmers & Jodhpurs, the Agras & Goas, the Kutches & Kashmirs and the lot. All places of stunning beauty, no doubt. Then there was an interesting solo, ‘plan-it-on-the-move’ trip to the Sundarbans Delta where I made friends with a lot of budget backpackers from Bihar who needed someone to share the boat bills with. A lot of such similar trips took places in India and international travel was also well under way from 2007 onwards, but it was in 2014 that Richa and I accidently (initial plan was to go to Coorg) reached Hampi, now a very popular destination. But in 2014 it wasn’t that well known to Indians with the biggest hint being that the ancient town full of ruins had no ATM machines and credit-debit cards were not used, only cash. We had reached Hampi in the dark, and seeing the silhouettes of the ruins as we approached the ancient Vijayanagara empire town is a lasting memory. We found a lot of backpackers there who were on long stays on the cheap and the whole feel was very bohemian. This trip in 2014 definitely made us rethink of our choice of destinations within India and what we really were seeking through our wanderings.
During this time we also started meeting some passionate Indian travellers on the road and one such was a fantastic gentleman named Amiteswar Sen. We met him in December 2017 on our tour from Bhuj to the Kutch salt flats and it was a fun ride with him and the others who were part of the same tour. For some reason during the entire trip I didn’t talk of our global adventures thus far, since I thought it might look as if I am bragging. But Mr. Amiteswar did speak of a topic that opened up a whole new world of travel reality for me. He told me that there was this young YouTuber, Varun Vagish, who was showing the masses how to travel the world on a budget. Back then in 2017 only he was reaching millions with his Hindi videos on his YouTube channel called ‘Mountain Trekker’. I somehow knew that very moment that there was a wind of change blowing in how & how much Indians travel the world. Up until then, I had hardly heard or seen Indians on the roads outside India and foolishly thought that I was the coolest international travel cat from the country. And here was a young (er) man bringing the world to India via the audio-visual mode i.e. YouTube and that too through our national language – Hindi.
But as most may know, YouTube travel videos aren’t my thing as it has always been the written word – be it prose as I write currently or poetry that I used to write earlier (which incidentally had its own weekly space in our Garhwal Post 15 years ago). So I was clear that I would stick to seeing the entire world but would only take photographs and continue writing for the all-popular ‘Lonely Planet’ guide books (from 2013 to 2022). But the thing with Lonely Planet was that while it was a big global brand in shoe string budget travel, there was no creative freedom. And then came this fantastic opportunity at Garhwal Post once again in October 2023. I suddenly found creative expression and now could write about my personal travel experiences & perspectives that too in my home state’s most popular local English newspaper. I couldn’t ask for more and so this is the route I have happily taken in my travels and my outreach since, besides my theme of seeing the entire natural world as against the world of countries picked by other big Indian travellers. However I haven’t totally written off YouTube yet, since later I may make educational content linked to world travel (provided it has takers).
So after these ‘soft adventures’ in India, we upped the ante and began venturing to weirder places. These sites were not really tourist destinations, as our Google search became more and more linked to Earth Sciences, Geography and to archeology, anthropology, paleoanthropology (study of ancient humans) and paleontology. This is what probably separates me from other travellers since I am a student of science and geography first and then a vagabond. I feel if you move as a seeker the experiences become so much more rewarding. This vagabonding in fact then becomes an investment in you rather than an expense on you. So basically I ignored the noise of ‘bucket lists’ and the ‘things you must see before you die’ or ‘before you turn 30’ and the so called ‘unique experiences’, ‘off the beaten path travels’ etc, etc. You know once it is on a popular website, blog or channel, it really isn’t off the beaten path. Rather it’s a place about to be trampled and beaten to death by the hordes. Why should we be part of the horde?
So this has been my personal discovery of my country and also the slow process of self-discovery in my country. It has been a self-discovery that has taken over two decades through countless trips, just to find out who I am as a person and what kind of traveller I really am. I have always believed in the idiom – ‘go the extra mile, it’s never crowded’. Why do what everyone does and why copy others when you could stand out simply by being the unique you. Only you can be you else you will not be new.
So here is where I take you into the heart of India and I promise you that it will be to none of the names mentioned in this feature. I don’t want to reveal the fascinating locations hidden deep within our stunning country just yet. As the astronaut of Indian origin, Sunita Williams would know (upon recently landing back on Earth) that there is no place like home. Well, since she explored space, her home was Earth but since I explored the world, my home is India.
Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home.
