GuPShup with Paras/Khyati on their 100 days India Tour

Paras/Khyati whom some of you know (since Paras was in Los Angeles and USC before moving to London where he stays currently) were on a 100 day tour of India which recently got over (in early Feb 2014). They religiously wrote a blog on their travels at http://paras.me/. I was following their blog religiously too. They started from the West, traveled North, came to the heart of India, then to the East following which came the South and finally back West. The interesting thing to me was that they took public transport and trains wherever possible and stayed mostly in Jain Dharmashalas.

The second last portion of this tour was Pune (and the last one was Devlali). When Paras pinged me one day and said that they were visiting Pune for 3 days and were eager to meet us, I was excited as well. I had many questions for them. :-). Once they entered our home (that was their 96th day) I bombarded them with questions and the following pseudo interview is a result of that bombardment. I am jotting down whatever I can remember. I had warned Paras/Khyati as well that a blog on KV would appear as a result of our gupshup. (Paras, please correct wherever necessary by posting in comments section. 🙂 ).

Prashant: So how long was this in the planning. Was it Paras’s dream and he dragged Khyati into it?
P&K: No, we both like to travel. We both are in the middle of a break (break from education and job) and this was a good time to go for our dream. It took a year of planning (narrowing down places that we want to visit, etc). Travelling within India vs Somewhere else had the advantage that we did not have to worry about Passports, Visas, etc.

Prashant: How did you manage so many train bookings?
P&K: We made reservations for most of our trip. Since train bookings open up 2 months before, we tried to be the early birds for most of our online bookings.

Prashant: What if you missed a connection? How do you handle uncertainties which are fairly common in the Indian travel system.
P&K: Thankfully there were no missed connections. There were some long delays but no missed connections. We had left some buffer time for some of the destinations, so that in case we have to adjust the schedule a bit to fall back in line we had the liberty to do that.

Prashant: What about accomodations and their bookings?
P&K: Some at friends and relatives, some at Jain/Gujarati Dharamshalas and very few at hotels. Dharamshalas dont take reservations on the phone. So that was a challenge. But we were prepared to sleep in the common dormitory of the Dharamshala if no rooms were available in the Dharamshala upon arriving there.

Prashant: Reading your blog I saw mostly positive experiences. Any negatives ones?
P&K: Nothing major really. Just the odd rickshaw wallah trying to extract more money from us. But that was minor.

Prashant: Eating out for so many days can cause stomach upsets.
P&K: On some of the destinations we stayed with friends and relatives. During that time eating home cooked food helped. We both eat Jain food as such. But we did not face problems because of that at hotels and dharamshalas. In fact folks at hotels were ready to customize their menu for us so that we can stick to the Jain food. Often the food at Dharamshalas was quite nice.

Prashant: How were you managing to connect to the internet? Did you have the Tata Photon USB or the Reliance USB to connect to the Net?
P&K: The Reliance Net Card did not work as well as we had hoped. Then our friend advised us to try iphone tethering. We tried it and it worked really well. So we used our iphone to connect to the internet and update our blog.

Prashant: What about washing clothes? How many pairs of clothes are you carrying?
P&K: Not that many pairs of clothes. We are carrying 2 cabin sized bags and bagpack for laptop. We used to wash our own clothes mostly as soon as we arrived at a Dharamshala and keep it for drying.

Prashant: While travelling India one has to be careful about hooligans, etc.
P&K: We were carrying pepper-spray with us. But fortunately did not need to use it.

Prashant: Carried lot of granola bars, etc?
P&K: We used to buy and eat lots of nuts. Besides fruits too.

Prashant: Any need to goto doctor in these 95 days?
P&K: Only once to a known doctor for some cold.

Prashant: How well do you know what has happened in the world during the past 95 days.
P&K: Actually we managed to read more newspapers on this trip. Since wherever we were, we would buy the local newspaper to read on the bus, train, etc.

Prashant: How did you pass your time on those long train and bus journeys?
P&K: Playing Cards, Reading, and sometimes Writing.

Prashant: Where did you spend the most time?
P&K: 14 days in Rajasthan. It’s beautiful !!

Kairavi: Did you visit all states of India?
P&K: No. We are leaving some for next time. 🙂

That is it from GuPShup with Prashant Shah for now. Hopefully some of us will take inspiration from Paras and Khyati and plan our own long long trip. Be sure to read up on their very interesting blog : http://paras.me

And Be Careful, Reader. You may be next on my list to interview. 🙂