The Drift
Visakhapatnam. Photo: Karan Madhok
In the late 2000s, Karan Madhok left home to travel alone around India, living off a backpack, sleeping in trains, searching for more of his country, and finding more parts of himself. In a photo-essay, he recalls why this ‘bharat darshan’ was the best experience of his life.
My mother accompanied me to the mall to purchase the hiking bag. It felt ironic to be in his environment of structured capitalism to buy something that was essentially my first step of escape. For the next few months, no matter how hard I attempted to assume a lifestyle of one without material needs—one that could drift with the whim of the passing wind, one free of burdens to anchor me down—this bag would always remind me of how I had begun. “Gautam Buddha,” my mother joked.
She didn’t much understand my purpose to leave a young career in the media to travel my country, to move without a final destination. Perhaps I didn’t fully understand the decision, either. I had a calling, and I knew that I was desperate to answer it. I knew that, even in the worst-case scenario, I would have the privilege of support from my family. I was dangling over a tightrope but had a cushy mattress to break my fall.
Two weeks after my 25th birthday, I packed up and left home.
On the tracks. Photo: Karan Madhok
All I had on me was that roomy hiking-bag in which I could stuff in a change of clothes, lots of books, a diary, a few toiletries, a sleeping bag, and a thermos. And my towel, of course. I had read my fair share of Douglas Adams. Don’t Forget Your Towel.
What followed next were 86 days on the road, during which I travelled in trains, buses, and automobiles, spending the majority of my nights sleeping in overnight trains to save on boarding, finding cheap guest-houses and ashrams around the country to lay my head, and relying on the kindness of old friends to lodge me from time to time. In these three months, I ended up setting foot in 11 different Indian states, dozens of cities around the country, eating a variety of food, hearing a symphony of different languages, and testing the waters of true, unstructured freedom.
It’s been twelve years since this trip and it remains the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.
*
Pushkar. Photo: Karan Madhok
It all began when I was back in Varanasi, my hometown in eastern Uttar Pradesh, working with the city’s newly-launched local edition of The Times of India. Despite having spent much of my young life living away, Varanasi was always the constant that I came back to. I had taken the city’s school buses, bicycled through its traffic, and played cricket on its streets. I was marginally aware that this city was of great historical and political significance, a spiritual centre and one of the oldest-living cities in the world. But when I was young, I didn’t pay these matters much attention. It was just home.
After living away, however, I became more curious about my hometown to see it filtered through the eyes of an outsider. My new job was invaluable to satiate this curiosity. I took multiple roles at TOI, covering almost every ‘beat’, from education to tourism to culture and sport. As time passed, I improved my expertise of the old city’s culture and history.
All I had on me was that roomy hiking-bag in which I could stuff in a change of clothes, lots of books, a diary, a few toiletries, a sleeping bag, and a thermos. And my towel, of course. I had read my fair share of Douglas Adams. Don’t Forget Your Towel.
But there was a dark side to the job, too. Every story—no matter how emotionally resonant, with whatever human suffering or joy at its core—was reduced to a word count. Most of my subjects were those poorer and less fortunate than me. Their stories could be challenging and stimulating. I had seen how my colleagues immersed themselves deep in their work and always had something to keep that urgent buzz going, something new to move on to, some other sensational piece of information to uncover. They spoke of people and problems in terms of trends and statistics. They advised me never to take the darkness home with me.
Soon, even the most harrowing tragedies became just another write-up. I was affected, of course, but there was always another deadline, another event to cover, another lead to chase. The work was non-stop, keeping me wired and permanently soaked into the city. Despite the colourful spirit of the job, I had become impassive about the smaller details. Restless, I felt tethered too tight to the limits of one city. I needed an escape—not a holiday, but something more rewarding.
Exactly one year after my first day with TOI, I quit. Overall, the job had been rewarding, sparking in me a new sense of inquisitiveness and curiosity, the yearning to learn more about the creases in my country that I had previously glossed over. I wanted to leave my hometown’s bubble—and my home—to go see for myself.
Outside of home and nearby cities in Uttar Pradesh, I had spent the majority of my time in the Himalayan town of Mussoorie. I had travelled to Delhi, parts of Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Kolkata and to Mumbai and Goa. But I felt guilty that there was so much more of the nation, so much variety outside my comfort zone that I hadn’t yet tasted.
McLeodganj. Photo: Karan Madhok
I had always had a restless personality. As a child, I would often drift away from my parents’ grasp in crowded, public places—airports, train stations, weddings—much to their chagrin. At 10, I had jumped over the gates and escaped away from my boarding school. When I trekked around Mussoorie, I had a habit of going away alone on my own paths, which my parents jokingly called my “adventures”. If I saw a peak, I wanted to climb it. If I saw a body of water at a distance, I needed to go touch it. I loved being unsettled. Fearlessly, I would hop on and away, always looking for that next “adventure”.
Living and working in Varanasi had reminded me of how much I missed that youthful adventurous spirit. After TOI, I decided on my most ambitious trip yet. I packed that hiking bag and carried an old Nokia “dumbphone”, promising to keep it switched off for most of the time. I resolved to only plan one iteration forward in the journey and nothing much else.
I started on November 1, 2008 with only a couple of appointments pencilled in for the road ahead: I had to be in Delhi for a Half-Marathon within the next week and arrive in Goa for New Year’s Eve with my friends by December 31. There was no schedule for what I would do in between those dates, and no plans for what I would after. There was no plan to return home and nothing set for the future.
I wondered why I was out here at all, in strange parts of the country without a purpose or friends or family. I did miss the value of others in my life, but I also appreciated the necessity of being myself, free of the reflection that I projected upon others.
*
The first stop was Allahabad, Varanasi’s closest major city, where I visited the Sangam—the confluence of three rivers (two real and one mythical). Then, up to the mountains in Mussoorie, where I soaked up on my childhood nostalgia, visited favourite haunts, and took part in an eating competition where I devoured 33 mutton-fried momos in one sitting. Just days later in Delhi, I ran my first-ever Half-Marathon. On to a bus from there to Jaipur and Ajmer, and up to Pushkar in Rajasthan, where I drifted into the famous Pink Floyd Hotel at midnight and slept a night in the lobby. I saw this holy town for its beautiful union of differing personalities: the ghats, the desert, and the hills.
From Pushkar, I went out to Jodhpur for a day, where I visited the Mehrangarh Fort. Then, things went awry: my plan from Jodhpur was to take an overnight train further west to Jaisalmer. Instead, at midnight at the Jodhpur train station, I got on the train at the wrong platform, going in the opposite direction.
I sat in the overcrowded and smoky General Class all night, unable to fall asleep under the bright glare of a tube-light that never shut off, ignoring the fetid smell of excrement from the overflowing toilet behind me, and cloud of beedi smoke in the coach. By the time I realised I was going the wrong way, I was already too far from a major stop, too deep into the night. I decided to stay seated until the train brought me back to Delhi the next morning.
This mistake, however turned out to be a boon, and set me on the path to an opportunity of a lifetime. Ever since I was young, I had hoped to travel to Dharamshala and McLeodganj, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the monastery where the Dalai Lama resided. While in Pushkar a few days earlier, I had read news reports of an international congress of the Tibetan government in McLeodganj coming up the next week. I decided that this change in direction at Jodhpur was an opportunity to follow another unplanned tangent. So, on the same day my train arrived back in Delhi, I hopped on an overnight bus up the snaky mountain roads in Himachal Pradesh, and at the crack of dawn the next morning, I had landed in cold, quiet McLeodganj. I wasn’t a full-time journalist any more, but I still had my TOI press card, and it came in handy when the officials in Dharamshala handed me a pass to attend the conference.
Puri. Photo: Karan Madhok
Two days after getting on the wrong train, I found myself in the Dalai Lama’s audience at his monastery. As he left the room, nodding and thanking the attendees, he reached over and shook my hand. It was a special feeling, to stumble into a beautiful moment out of sheer chaos.
I spent several days in the region, hiking, writing, reading, eating more momos, and playing pick-up basketball with monks and young locals. From Dharamshala, I came back down to Delhi, and from Delhi, I took a cross-country overnight train to Bhubaneswar—my first time in Orissa—to visit a friend in college. With Bhubaneswar as my base, I went next to Puri. Attacked by an onslaught of mosquitoes all night in an ashram, I doused a splash of water all over myself. Unable to sleep, I left early in the morning for the beach, the eastern shore of India by the Bay of Bengal. I visited the Jagannath Temple, and from there, the Konark Temple and Dhauli, the presumed site of the Kalinga War.
When I returned to Bhubaneswar, I joined a few friends for a trip to beautiful Visakhapatnam and Araku in Andhra Pradesh. For a few days, I had the company of familiar people, feeling like an imposter peeking into humanity while actually heading further away from it.
Then, I decided to be alone again: my next train was to Chhattisgarh. I spent a day at Raipur, and was soon on a bus to the Bastar district in Jagdalpur. I travelled from here to see the Chitrakote Waterfalls and the jungles and tribal areas, across roadways often closed in fear of Naxal activity.
I would return to my hotel room in Jagdalpur every night, alone with a TV and perhaps a drink. I would switch my phone on, answer messages to loved ones to let them know that I was safe, and without updating them on my exact location, turn it off again. The family in Varanasi were worried, of course, but they trusted me and remained patient.
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Chitrakote Watefalls. Photo: Karan Madhok
It was during this period that I really began to cherish the boons of traveling alone. I was able to get up and leave whenever I wanted, to whichever destination I could conjure, often in the last moment. Apart from occasionally seeing friends for some company—and also for laundry and to stock up on necessary resources—I was happy being on my own, happy to follow my moods and half-cooked plans. I made my choice of destination based on limited research in each area I visited. Usually, I travelled in the cheapest way I could, saving to book the journeys up to the last day, remaining flexible lest a new spark led me down a different, new road.
I spent most days as a tourist, and depending on where I was, I visited historical sites, or museums, or popular places to eat, or bookshops, or beaches, or waterfalls, or went on little treks, or watched movies alone in the cinema. The variety of experiences ensured me that no day felt stale or repetitive: Everything was fresh, and thus, every day was an adrenaline rush.
Of course, when I was alone, I would stay up late into the long nights, deep in thought, tempted to turn on my phone and reach out to someone—an old friend, an ex, whoever—only for the company of a familiar voice. I wondered why I was out here at all, in strange parts of the country without a purpose or friends or family. But instead of feeling down, these meditations would help me feel even surer about myself. I did miss the value of others in my life, but I also appreciated the necessity of being myself, free of the reflection that I projected upon others. The necessity of what Sartre called the ‘being-in-itself’ and ‘being-for-oneself’. I could live life without the need of outside gratification.
I returned to Raipur, and from there boarded another long train through Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, and finally, to the far end of Maharashtra. I had a close friend who lived in Pune, and I stayed with him for a few days. It was a jarring return to a more “modern” city. Tepidly, I even entered a shopping mall again.
Pune. Photo: Karan Madhok
I loved Pune, its weather, and its liberal and vibrant feel. I connected with an old relative for the first time—an uncle—who happened to be a kindred spirit. He understood my drift and didn’t question it. He offered me to live with him if I wished to return, and, for the first time since I left home, I dared to plan for the future. Maybe a few months here wouldn’t be a bad idea after all.
For now, however, I wanted to stay on the road, stay unsettled. It was end of the calendar year. From Pune I went to Mumbai, and then, met old friends to travel together to the beaches of Goa. Most of these friends were better placed in their lives, firmly charting their young careers. Their trip to Goa was a vacation; mine was just another stop in a journey with no finish line.
Men and women and the elderly and the children passed by, faces remembered and quickly forgotten with the quick passage of changing tracks. My daily diet often heavily relied on samosas and chai off the platforms. My only stability came in the kinetic movement under my feet, of forward motion, a long, never-ending sentence without a full stop in sight.
We welcomed the New Year by the beach—now, on India’s western shore just weeks after I’d touch the waters on the other far end. 2009 was already looking brighter than ever before.
From Goa, I was back in Mumbai, and from Mumbai, I went south even further, this time to Karnataka and Bangalore. I had an old friend here who spent much of her time in the Ashram of a certain world-famous spiritual leader in the outskirts of India’s tech capital. I had no interest in this form of organised spirituality, but the visit was a good excuse to see another way of living, in another part of the country. I wanted to be open to every new adventure and offer that came my way. At the Ashram, there were some good experiences (yoga), some overrated experiences (haldi milk) and some annoying ones (the nightly ‘satsang’ meetings). I even met the multiple-honorific guru himself. I tolerated it.
After four days in the Ashram and its unpleasant sattvic food, I was happy for lunch at KFC back in urban Bangalore. It amused me: I found fulfilment not in the cultish spirituality of the ashram, but in my ability to swing from one branch to another, in my complete freedom to be whatever I wanted to be from day to day, city to city, train journey to train journey.
*
Mumbai. Photo: Karan Madhok
If there was any constant to my journey, it was the Indian Railways. I have always adored train travel: the ability to be on the move while being so close to the country at all times, the chance to see different parts of India outside the window without really having to stop en route, the conversations with strangers of almost every strata of life, fellow citizens who moved from one destination to the next for work, for family, for leisure.
And in my case, moving for the sake of movement itself.
Depending on the part of the country you’re in, and when you travel, it can be notoriously difficult to find seats on any given train at the last minute. I relied heavily on the IRCTC website and cyber cafes. Choosing the ‘tatkal’ option was always a risk. If I couldn’t get a guaranteed reservation, I would often board the train anyways, and share seats with kind strangers, or move from berth to berth in the middle of the night just to find a place to lay my head. Some of the train journeys were inexorably lengthy: India is massive, and delays are common. 15 hours. 22 hours. 30 hours. 36 hours. 44 hours.
On average, I slept one of every three nights on a train. It was the cheapest option. Men and women and the elderly and the children passed by, faces remembered and quickly forgotten with the quick passage of changing tracks. My daily diet often heavily relied on samosas and chai off the platforms. My only stability came in the kinetic movement under my feet, of forward motion, a long, never-ending sentence without a full stop in sight.
India is not one country, but dozens, fitted to sing the same national anthem and accept the same constitution. The very fact that we attempt to keep the structure going despite our differences is what makes me most proud of being Indian. We are different organs connected by the same nervous system, like coaches on the Indian Railway running on uneasy tracks across the breadth of the nation.
*
After Bangalore, I was finally feeling fulfilled, feeling like I had done justice to my wandering heart. The past three months had resuscitated much of the optimism and energy I had lost after my year with the newspaper.
I had a clearer idea of how to plan for the future, and the hazy outlines of this plan ended with a return to Varanasi, back into the arms of my surprised family, where I had access to clean water, delicious home-cooked aloo-parathas, broadband internet, warm blankets, and air-conditioners when required. It was a sudden reminder of the comforts I had taken for granted. Since my teenage years, my parents had been able to provide for me the financial advantage to make choices for myself: the choice to stay and build something tangible; the choice to leave in search of the unknowable. I was well-aware that the majority of people in the country didn’t have this luxury. They had to play the hand they were dealt.
I also knew that I enjoyed the privilege of being a man in India, a privilege that has often been cruelly denied to women and sexual minorities. I could sleep close to strangers on a train, uncovered and unprotected. I could walk down a street at night in a strange new city without checking to see if I was being followed. I could place some degree of faith in strangers the lead the way when I needed direction. I could look at the country without fearing the eyes that looked back.
For the past three months, I had been a vagrant by choice, not necessity. Instead of being driven out by tragedy or desperation, I was a wanderer on my own terms. I knew that ‘finding oneself’ is, in itself, a privilege.
Benaulim. Photo: Karan Madhok
*
Time has passed.
I have ‘settled down’ since, getting more comfortable with planting my roots with work, friends, and family. I even took the ultimate steps towards voluntary servitude: marriage and fatherhood. But my travels alone have continued. I’ve tried to take a solitary trip every year, going to Bodh Gaya, to Kasol, back to Mcleodganj, back to Pune. I’ve visited Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Madhya Pradesh. I even returned to my hometown to see Varanasi through the eyes of a tourist, living in anonymity by the ghats and gullies I adore so much. I enjoyed work trips that sent me out to new cities, so I could take the downtime to explore the places for myself. Of course, Mussoorie has always been a second home, where I’m equally comfortable drifting alone or spending time with close family and friends.
Train to Bangalore. Photo: Karan Madhok
The travels reemphasised to me my idea of India’s strength in its diversity and plurality. It has now been over a decade since my trip, and our country’s national politics have since taken a sharp dive towards toxic nationalism. The country has always been fractured, precariously balancing multiple cultures under the same flag ever since its inception. But in recent years, there have been attempts by the political majority to forcibly homogenise our diversity, to conform everyone into the same ideas of religion, language, and culture.
We have to resist this homogony, and instead, celebrate our differences. India is not one country, but dozens, fitted to sing the same national anthem, salute the same tiranga, and accept the same constitution. The fit is often awkward, sure, but the very fact that we attempt to keep the structure going despite our differences is what makes me most proud of being an Indian. We are different organs connected by the same nervous system, like coaches on the Indian Railway running on uneasy tracks across the breadth of the nation.
There is still so much I haven’t seen, notably three of our four corners: Jammu and Kashmir up north, Gujarat in the far west, and all of the states in the Northeast. I haven’t been to Hyderabad or anywhere in Telangana, especially since it became its own state in 2014. I haven’t stopped by in Jharkhand. I still hope to see the off-shore islands of Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep. There are union territories left to explore, old architecture left to marvel at, more mountains to climb.
Recently, a friend shared a video online of the actor Pankaj Tripathi, who advised young Indians, after they finish Class 12th, to travel the entire country on the cheapest available trains and live in dharmshalas and gurudwaras. “The journey will make you into something special,” Tripathi said in Hindi. The video reminded me of my own trip, and was the instigating spark that made me write this essay.
Tripathi is correct: it is, indeed, very affordable to see India on some public transportation and cheap accommodations. Unfortunately, not every young person can feel safe to take on the road by themselves. Not everyone has the freedom of time to take out of their lives to such endeavours, especially in a system where everything from education to job placement to health benefits and real estate is a constant struggle, a competition against millions of others of the most-populous young country in the world.
It’s a risk to defy everything—one’s family, opportunities, safety nets, and sometimes, even your common sense—to travel in this way. But for those who can afford (in money, time, or security) to do so, the rewards are invaluable. The trip will indeed make you into something special, make you see multiple sides of this beautiful, chaotic prism of our country, and eventually, bless you with empathy to become a better citizen for the future.
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Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar, whose fiction, translation, and poetry have appeared in The Literary Review, The Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and more. He is the founder of the Indian basketball blog Hoopistani and has contributed to NBA India, SLAM Magazine, FirstPost, and more. Karan is currently working on his first novel. Twitter: @karanmadhok1
