Guwahati-based food blogger and chef, Aprajita Singh, had always wanted to travel through North India. She desired to sample its manifold cuisines, get up close with locals who cooked the dishes and in doing so, peek into their lives. Her wish came true when she was picked as one of the original six winners of a unique travel scholarship that provided free travel, stay and opportunities for some interesting life lessons. She fondly recalls the soulful conversations with her fellow travellers over cups of tea in the bright common rooms every morning and the thought-provoking silences of moonlit evenings after a day of mingling with interesting local people at every place they visited. “The trip helped me evolve emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically it managed to push me out of my comfort zone,” Singh beams.
The Odyssey Travel Scholarship is an initiative by Delhi-based Shoshin Tribe, a travel firm that promotes conscious travel, in partnership with goSTOPS, a backpacker hostel company. Winners took a 35-day road trip across North India this April; a slow movement proposition to promote sustainable travel and consequently, sustainable living. The announcement for the next scholarship in March 2023 will be made later this month.
Aprajita’s other ‘tribers’ were filmmaker Srijandeep from Raipur, architect and aspiring architectural historian Athulya Jeevi from Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai-based sustainability advocate Parag Satardekar, Bengaluru-based author Ananya, and photographer Naval from Ahmedabad. Later, Pawasna Sharma from Gangtok and Ayush Khushwah from Jabalpur also joined as wild card entries. To survive and thrive in any people-oriented industry, diversification of experiences is important. They carried minimum luggage, with no sign of plastic bottles anywhere; learned to stay with local families in remote homestays and respect indigenous traditions and surroundings; participated in clean-up drives; and relied on local modes of transport to reduce the adverse effects of travel on nature.
Says aspiring architect, Athulya Jeevi: “It was amazing to hear unheard voices, which we may never have otherwise come across.” He points to visiting the Harappan site at Rakhigarhi village in Haryana as the highlight of the trip for him, as it was living evidence of humanity’s progress centuries ago. Similarly, filmmaker Srijandeep found something inspirational at every stop. The calm serenity of the Norbulingka Monastery in Dharamshala especially provided creative fodder, but so did the faces of smiling village children for whom these travellers were the real entertainment, besides the serene beauty of North India’s countryside as they drove past it, safely ensconced in their bus. It was this innate curiosity to experience new things that made these tribers the ideal candidates for this trip.
Himanshu Shekhar, the founder of Shoshin Tribe, says, “We chose these individuals based on their applications, which displayed their passion to explore untouched lands, enjoy off-the-beaten-path experiences like hiking in the Himalayas, deep-diving into local cultures, and connecting with humans at a personal level. We received over 400 applications, but these eight stood out because their focus was on the human connection with nature.”
The travel scholarship is open to members of the Shoshin Tribe. Membership can be attained by filling out a form on their website and paying a fee of `500. Shoshin Tribe, launched in 2021, hosts several programmes to raise awareness of sustainable travel and closely collaborates with like-minded brands through videos, podcasts, blogs, and social media. The goSTOPS hostel chain was their accommodation partner for the scholarship, owing to its hostels across 19 destinations, from Coorg to Varanasi.
The scholarship travellers left Delhi in April on local state transport buses, moving on to Patiala, Amritsar, Mcleodganj, Dehradun, Mussoorie, Rishikesh, and the unexplored villages of Rakhigarhi and Devalsari, a hamlet 55 km from Mussoorie. The destinations were chosen for their rich cultural history and experiences they offer, such as meditation drives, photography walks, a Triund Hike with Waste Warriors (where the team volunteered to clean up garbage in a village near Dharamshala), village walks and culturally rich attractions such as the Golden Temple and Wagah Border. A day spent in Amritsar during the Baisakhi festival was a memorable stopover for Singh. For Naval, the itinerary was an amazing “life-changing experience”.
Ananya, a budding writer, summarises the experience best, “We know the places and have read their history, but seeing them for real is one which I will always cherish.”