Travel, in the era of Instagram and Facebook, is not the same soul-searching, get-lost-to-be-found experience that we used to associate it with. Bringing meaning back to the word is the travel company, Wander Gupt, that is moving away from minute-by-minute itineraries and moving towards free-flowing, experiential travel. "We may have extensive agendas, but the roads have different plans for us," says the travel company’s founder, Jatin Adlakha, who is in Ahmedabad. For now at least.
Adlakha has been travelling his whole life, though at first due to his father's bank job, it was later by choice. A 3,700 km bike ride in the Himalayas, an 1,800 km bike trip from Gurgaon to Pune, and the most recent one, a trek to the Everest Base Camp — Adlakha has done it all. The BITS Pilani, Hyderabad alumnus recently broke away from the shackles of a desk job to travel, without a desk weighing him down and, of course, "to share the kind of travel I have done," he states.
So, the plan for Wander Gupt is that there is no plan, well, only a very elementary one. Take for example their first trip, which the Haryana-born recently announced. The only details divulged are where you will be going — somewhere in the Himachal, when you will be going — January 25, and what you will be doing — snow walks, village tours and other important details. Everything else is a surprise! And though leading trips is not new for Adlakha, who has been organising them for his colleagues for quite some time now, what's new for him is that he’s now charging for it.
But he promises it will be worth every penny. Wonder how? Well, did you know that when you look to your right from Hillary Bridge, the suspension bridge at the Everest Base Camp, you can catch the first sight of the majestic Mount Everest? Or that you can order yourself a pizza when you’re at the same camp, perched at 5,100 metres above sea level? There are only a few people who can give you first-hand information like this — a localite, an experienced guide and Jatin Adlakha! Get ready to learn a lot more if you ever decide to join him on one of his trips.
And it's not like things always go as per Adlakha's plans, which is bound to happen because neither does he follow an agenda nor any guidebook. "I just tell myself that it's okay; it's the philosophy of life that things can go either way," he says. And when people ridicule him for missing some facts? "It just gives me another reason to go back and visit what I missed," he says and we hope we all maintain the same attitude towards life as well.
Check Wander Gupt out at facebook.com/wanderguptofficial/
