Kanyakumari, Ladakh, Siberia, these travellers will walk anywhere

What’s the best way to discover India? On foot, it seems, as everyone from teens to the middle-aged gets bitten by the slow-travel bug. Some do it because they can’t afford flying to faraway places, others to connect with new people and absorb diverse cultures.

Take Yogen Shah, for example. The 42-year-old teacher and management consultant from Vadodara in Gujarat is on a mission to walk 40,000km, to spread the message of healthy living.

Highway To Health
Yogen suffered from ankylosing spondylitis (AS), an autoimmune disease, for 10 years. Doctors in the UK and India weren’t able to nail his problem for a long time. But after he was diagnosed, he changed his lifestyle and started walking to promote sustainability. When he’s touring, Yogen walks an average of 30km daily, and he has already covered 15,000km through nine states and five Union Territories in the past three years. He walked from Gujarat to Chandigarh during the 2020 lockdown, and from Gujarat to Kanyakumari between October and December 22 last year.

After interacting with rich and poor across states, he’s realised that “there is a growing gap between people’s aspirations and reality. Expectations are high, and in the race to fulfill them people fail to give enough time to the health and well-being of themselves and others. ”

He’s found well-knit families in slums and broken homes among the wealthy, and it’s his belief that “the more we have a meaningful life of psychologically rich experiences, the less time we will have for amassing material wealth”.
On his walks, Yogen has also seen India without the lens of news headlines. “For example, when Kerala was in the news for vigilante violence, I found it the most welcoming state. After many years of living, studying, and working abroad, I find India to be the safest of all. ’’ He’s now planning a 45-day, 1,500km coastline walk from Vadodara to Khambhat and Kachchh within Gujarat.

On A Shoestring To Siberia
Rohan Agrawal from Nagpur in Maharashtra is walking and hitchhiking to Siberia. The 21-year-old dropped out of BCom and began his journey with a dip in the Ganga at Varanasi, on August 25, 2020. At the time of writing, he had been staying in Nepal for 15 days. It’s been a very slow journey because Rohan is travelling practically without money. He started with Rs 2,500, was robbed of Rs 1,000, and has managed with whatever people give him on the way. “I don’t ask anyone for anything, but when people offer, I do not refuse. ”

In these three years he has travelled to 26 states in India, and visited Bangladesh. He’s also learnt to take life one day at a time, doing odd jobs in hotels and hostels, volunteering at dog shelters and farms, and teaching English to underprivileged children. “While I have had the opportunity to stay in star hotels during this journey, I have also stayed in temples, mosques and churches, slept outside buildings, homes or on the streets, and even survived extreme climate conditions,” he says, adding, “Being away from your comfort zone is definitely not easy and the challenges are many, especially since there is a lot of uncertainty. ”

He’s been sick at times, but loneliness is harder to deal with, “especially in the remotest villages, where language acts as a barrier, (and) you want to go back home. However, that’s when I think of the good times, the rich experiences I have gained,” he says.

Above all, he is driven by his mission of environment conservation and reviving India’s gurukul system. At the current rate, when does he hope to reach Siberia? “In the next 10 years, I hope to reach Oymyakon (the coldest permanent settlement in the world) in Russia by walking from Delhi. ”
Gritty Road To Ladakh
On August 16, 2021, Samprith, Sabastin and Nishanth G, all 19-year-olds from Kadaba in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka, took the road to Ladakh. The boys aren’t from wealthy families. Samprith’s father is a carpenter, and Sabastin and Nishanth are sons of wage labourers. So, they decided to walk. At first, they made it a ‘walk for farmers’. Carrying 9kg of luggage and a tent, they covered 50-60km daily and interacted with farmers in Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra. However, language became a barrier further north.

When they were within 100km of Delhi, they boarded a bus to Manali. Samprith fell sick on the way and had to return from Manali, but Nishanth and Sabastin realised their dream, covering 3,000km by the second week of October 2021.
They had left home with Rs 2,000 each, hoping to find sponsors on the way. The journey finally cost them Rs 15,000 each, and taught them the value of food and money. In the months since their return, Sabastin and Nishanth have been selected for Agniveer training while Samprith is planning to go abroad.

Miles For Human Values
“I started the journey realising that human values are diminishing,” says ad filmmaker Vivekananda H K, who went on his ‘Jnana Bhiksha Padayatre’, walking 11,500km over 385 days between 2020 and 2021. The 54-year-old held nearly 2,000 interactions with people on the way. Vivekananda is concerned about the way technology has taken over people’s lives, making them narrow-minded and turning relationships sour. “This walk is my attempt to see the world around me and spread a message, by interacting with like-minded people,” he says, adding he now has a better understanding of people and the ways to spread goodness. In his future projects he plans to “reconstruct human values that have been commercialised”.