All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian – 9
By Nitin Gairola
Going back into our travel past again, my partner Richa and I started European backpacking 3 years before ‘The Queen’. This is not to insinuate that the Queen was a backpacker. I am simply referring to 2014’s Bollywood movie called ‘Queen’ in which the lead actress goes solo around Europe after a broken heart and backpacks her way on the cheap through hostels and dorms, which is a very interesting sub-culture of travel around this relatively small continent with very small countries. So, this movie was a major hit in India and I am sure solo Euro travel amongst youngster would have skyrocketed in the wake of this silver screen blockbuster. And as I was to realise though our travel journey, I generally stayed a few years ahead of all travel trends and this European backpacking tour of ours in 2011 was no exception.
I had booked a Finnair ticket from Delhi to Rome via Helsinki and taken our Schengen visa via the Italian Embassy, since our main flights from India were to and from Rome, Italy. I did want to cover a lot of countries on this trip just to get my ‘country count’ up in our early days of world travel. This is something I see a lot of youngsters do nowadays and it does add to some ‘bragging rights’ I suppose, but more importantly it helps in getting a broader view of the world, more exposure and you can start connecting the dots slightly better. If nothing else, it gives you more stories to tell and we know the power of storytelling amongst humans. However, this was clearly the time when I had not thought about any world travel records especially those for visiting the ‘natural world’ of deserts, jungles, grasslands and the like. In fact, as I had mentioned previously, we did not actively and systematically start visiting the natural world until 2012 with our first trips to the Middle East and Africa and later to Central – South America and the Polar Regions.
So, we landed in Rome and took a train from the airport to the city and went to rest in our budget hotel, which was possibly a 2 or a 3 star homely place, but not a hostel. We found Rome amazingly artistic in its architecture at every corner. The ruins of the ancient Roman Forum took me back to the classic Julius Caesar play written by Shakespeare and studied by us in school. The Colosseum was so well depicted in the Hollywood movie Gladiator and is also one of the 7 manmade wonders of the world. It didn’t disappoint in real life either. The list of such wonders can go on and on, such as The Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and more. Besides there is a separate tiny UN country in the middle of Rome itself, which is the ‘Holy See’ or what is more popularly called ‘Vatican City’. It contains the sublime Sistine Chapel, the walls and ceilings of which were painted by none other than Michelangelo and includes his masterpieces such as the seminal ‘Hand of God’ and the ‘Judgement of Man’.
But rather than going any further into trying to convince you to visit Rome, which anyway should be seen at least once in a lifetime, I would rather talk about the benefit of backpacking, of budgeting wherever you feel it is justified and in spending money for the same reasons. Often times we spend on things that were not necessary and save on what we really wanted to do or see in the first place. In our case that mistake would happen if were to splurge on 4 or 5 star hotels, business class in air travel and saved on our adventure or academic activities and excursions. So, in Europe, we always stay in budget hotels, or hostels (but private rooms not dorms) or Air B&Bs. So, as you can see, we don’t go absolutely bare-bones budget (however, one can) but we don’t spend on our overnight stays disproportionately either. And since we are not famously fond of food, we avoid restaurants and buy food either from super marts like the locals do and cook it in the kitchens of hostels or eat street food or plonk ourselves in pocket friendly restaurants.
Richa is, in fact, a preferred vegetarian and this suits her as it would suit a lot more Indians. I would say that, in our early days, this budgeting is the one thing that allowed us to do some epic adventures into the natural world as we had become less fussy about creature comforts, and in such places these luxuries are hard to come by, even if you pay dearly for your tours. I would not change this for anything. However, it is also true that now that we have more resources and are a bit older, so we do like some more sleeping comforts than what we did in our late 20s and early 30s.
But the one thing that makes me a ‘no regrets’ person as far as travel goes is that I never said no to an adventure that we really wanted to do, only because it wasn’t fitting our budget at the time. Of course, it helps that we are not adrenalin junkies who would sky dive or bungee jump, but are more academic and artistic and prefer safaris, multi-day expedition tours, hikes, educational camps and the like, which are generally of a longer duration and more meaningful for learning about a part of the world than jumping off an aeroplane for all of 5 minutes. No offence to adrenalin thrill seekers, but my brain is driven by a neurotransmitter called dopamine instead. It is found more in people who have a ‘risk taking-reward seeking’ behaviour rather than those wanting a rush of adrenalin in a predetermined controlled environment.
So, to wrap it up, such backpacking and budgeting (where needed), saves travellers money on overnight halts, allows them to stay in the city centre for less, gives them access to the hostel’s kitchen and eat wholesome food, provides a chance to meet amazing fellow travellers and hear their stories, to learn from others in the community, make new friends, get offers & deals on activities and, most importantly, to never feel lonely as a solo traveller in a faraway land. This is the true value of backpacking which only adds and compounds over time.
(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.)
