Around the country in 45 days | An adventure attempted by four students of IIT Gandhinagar

By Apeksha Srivastava

Doesn’t it sound similar to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days? Like the characters in the book attempt to travel the world in 80 days, this title points towards the adventure Kavita Vaishnaw had with Ribhu Vajpeyi, Ishita Goyal and Harsh Shah (team: Numinous), B.Tech students at IIT Gandhinagar, while they travelled around India in 45 days.

“Traveling- it gives you home in a thousand strange places, and then leaves you a stranger in your own land. It offers you a hundred roads to adventure, and gives your heart wings!” – Ibn Battuta

This quote summarizes the entire journey of the team Numinous throughout the country. The team members felt that this trip was life-changing and made them more connected to, respectful and accepting of our countrymen. They have grown to know more about India.

The team explored different parts of India under the Explorer Fellowship program of IIT Gandhinagar which is the first of its kind offered by any IIT. It is an annual summer program which encourages the students to explore our country, engage with diverse cultures, lifestyles, places and people of the country, with an aim to enhance their societal connection. If selected, the students have to travel to at least six states, covering at least one state in the Northern, North-Eastern and Southern parts of the country during their summer break, with a given limited budget of around 40,000/- per person.

Traveling across India on a limited budget makes students appreciate the huge difference even a little sum of money makes. “Any other day, I would not have found Rs.5 worth wasting my time and energy over. But one thing that this Fellowship has taught us is the value of money,” said Kavita. She went on to recall how her teammates cleverly dealt with a shopkeeper in Delhi who was selling cold drinks above the M.R.P by recording his video on their smartphones.

The Explorer Fellowship program started 4 years ago in 2015 when 22 students set out to rediscover India. Their numbers rose in 2016 and 2017 saw 96 students from different academic streams pick up different themes to travel such as unrecognized talents and skilled artisans, narratives of different parts of India, manufacturing processes of small-scale industries, etc. The team Numinous selected ‘Different street foods of India’ as their focal theme.

Students are required to plan their journey frugally. They should travel by state government buses or sleeper class on trains and stay at hostels, home-stays and dharamshalas. The first problem the team faced was to find a place to stay in Amritsar. There were dharamshalas near the Golden Temple, but they were only for families.

Talking more about the challenges, they said that locals were scared of the camera and skeptical about answering their questions. But after they were informed about the program, they showed great hospitality. Finding clean washrooms, especially during train/ bus journeys and safety are still the two major roadblocks for females. Women have to reach back to the hostel before night in most parts of the country. Vegetarian students faced some difficulty with food which was sometimes hard to find in restaurants of West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh.

Jaison Manjaly, Associate Professor (Humanities) and former Dean (Student Affairs) explained that the students become more inclusive in their attitudes and cosmopolitan in their approach after such an experience.

In India – food, clothes, weather, landscapes, vegetation, languages, people, music and dance change every few kilometers. The lifestyle in north-east is often completely foreign to the natives of southern India and vice versa. The team expected Pondicherry to be very similar to Goa but actually found them to be poles apart in reality. Pondicherry, with its tree-lined streets and colonial villas had more of French touch and Goa gave off a strong Portuguese vibe although being on the south-western side of the country! It was a mixed feeling of experiencing global and local at the same time, “Our stay left marks not only on our bodies but also on our hearts. While our skins darkened, our minds lightened as the breeze on the beaches and the waves of the ocean took all our pains away.”

Chetan Pahlajani, Assistant Professor (Mathematics) and Faculty Coordinator of the Explorer Fellowship Program opines that it boosts morale, hones the communication and leadership skills and keeps the boredom born from excessive studies in check. While on the one hand students have fun and learn more about the reality of India, on the other they also understand the importance of financial management, bonding, negotiations and conflict resolution firsthand. In the long run, this Program equips students to face almost any kind of challenge! To encourage the students to document their trip and reflect, the two best diaries/ blogs maintained by them during their journey receive a prize of Rs 5,000 and a certificate of merit.

The Numinous had set out to experience the wide variety of street foods in India but their journey ended with a much broader understanding of the country. The exploration which started from Punjab (Wagha Border and Amritsar: Langar and Chhole Bhature), going all the way through Himachal Pradesh (Manali: Momoz), Delhi (Parathas), Rajasthan (Jodhpur: Pyaaz Kachori and Mirchi Vada) Maharashtra (Mumbai: Vada Paav), Goa, Puducherry (Pizzas), Karnataka (Bangalore: Dosas), Telangana (Hyderabad: Hyderabadi Biryani and Jauzi Halwa) West Bengal (Kolkata and Darjeeling: Rasogulla and Chhena Mithai) and ended at Sikkim (Gangtok: Noodles), made the entire team more broad-minded, brave and more enriched in ways of handling problems professionally. Their journey required all of them to come out of their comfort zones. Four young adults, who were on a voyage of discovering themselves, were able to overcome all hardships and rose out triumphant in their endeavors!

About the Author:

Apeksha Srivastava is Senior Project Associate, External Communications, IIT Gandhinagar. She has done M.Tech (2016-18) in Biological Engineering from IIT Gandhinagar.