BENGALURU: On a misty morning in January 2020, it suddenly hit avid backpacker Surya Teja Kollipara that he was living his dream life. At Kotagiri, a quaint village in the hills of Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, he was managing a friend’s backpacking hostel called ‘The Door to Nirvana’. He was to be stationed there for six weeks. His work involved taking the in-house happiness officer, aka Djacko, the golden retriever, for a morning walk. The rest of the day was about managing the hostel and in the evenings, he ran across the tea gardens with Djacko. “At night, we used to watch movies in the home theatre.
Those were the best six weeks of my life and I wanted such days forever.” While he was figuring out how to get there, Covid changed work patterns. His company ShareChat, a social media app where he works as the strategy head in Bengaluru, announced work from home until further notice.
This July as Teja looks back, he realises that he has travelled 65,000 km on road, swam across 35+Nm and flown above 1525m above sea level in the last two years. Even during the lockdown, he managed to stay over four weeks in places such as Auroville, Leh, Amritsar and Goa. But how does he make the ‘workation’ (work plus vacation) work? It hasn’t been just travel and sightseeing for Teja.
Alongside his five-day remote working week, he has managed to do seven outdoor activities - surfing, kayaking, standup paddling, skiing, poi spinning, skating, scuba diving etc. Considering his workplace paid for his workstation set up and reimburses Wi-Fi costs, he could save up and use it for travel.
“I was lucky that even when I tested Covid positive in April 2020, I could spend three weeks in a picturesque village in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand,” says the 26-year-old traveller who documents his travel on @thegreatindianbackpacker on Instagram. He volunteered the entire December of 2020 at Mantra Surf School/ Ashram in Mulki, Karnataka, where he learned surfing, kayaking and standup paddling (SUP).
For skiing, he did a basic skiing course at the Indian Institute of Skiing & Mountaineering (IISM), Gulmarg, where he was a certified skier after clearing the exam. Similarly, in scuba diving, he gotten a Open Water Scuba Diver Certification (SSI) from a dive school in Andaman. “For skateboarding, I got luckier, I bought a skateboard, watched Youtube videos and started cruising. It was as simple as that,” he adds.