Pushing the boundaries of what traveling can do for us

-Through all the amazing people we meet

Last night, as I sat down to watch the first season of Stranger Things (for the second time), my phone buzzed with a notification. It was Paul, who had tagged me on a post on Facebook. I checked it immediately out of curiosity because the last time I met Paul was almost a year ago. The post had nothing to do with me and everything at the same time.

It was a picture of Paul and Chevy in ‘high’ spirits, cheering under the sun along the coast line of Montenegro. They were meeting fifteen months post a very memorable time, when fate brought us clueless 30 somethings together in a cozy little homestay in Kohima, Nagaland.

Chevy is from Nagaland and Paul is from Germany. So what the hell are they doing in the Balkans one might think?

Here’s the thing I learnt about traveling, backpacking in particular in my case. Apart from the obvious joy of experiencing a whole new place and culture, we get to meet some very interesting people. People who might actually be quite different from us. But when such people meet under circumstances where the idea of ‘home’ is temporary, and there’s a restless yet exciting flicker of discovering the unknown with each new day, a kind of magic happens. Stories are exchanged, new friendships are born, ideas are shared and from that moment on destiny takes on a rather different turn. This is what happened to me, Paul and Chevy.

When all of us met in Nagaland in May 2015, Chevy, a cycling enthusiast, was jobless, Paul, a designer, had quit his job and was traveling on his bike from Bangkok to Germany and I was between jobs and wandering in the North East for a month. Neither of us had a clue of what our plans might be for the next year, but somewhere in the midst of serious conversations and inane laughter we picked up a few things.

While in Nagaland, we met two Scottish doctors, Tom and Robert, who were cycling all the way from London to Singapore, on bamboo bicycles they had built on their own, to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. I did a test ride on Tom’s bicycle and it was uncomfortable to say the least. Just imagining they were crossing borders on those bicycles was painful. Kudos to them for completing their ambitious plan. Tom and Robert’s story inspired Chevy and currently he is out on a world tour on his self-made Bamboo Bicycle. His aim is to tell the world about the beautiful Nagaland and Naga Culture. And a Bamboo bicycle is fitting in this context because of how intricate a part of the Naga Culture bamboo is — used extensively for several purposes such as food, furniture and architecture. Out of the 24–25 odd countries he is planning to cover, he has already been to quite a few and his Facebook posts are inspiring.

When I met Paul, he had already been traveling for a few months on his Nagasaki, a name given to his bike with love in Nagaland. He was planning to travel for only a few months more, but it has been a year and a half since he started out and is still on the road. As Paul puts it, ‘Chevy’s enthusiasm and adventurous spirit’ played a huge role in how Paul’s travel plans got extended beyond his imagination. And fifteen months since they first met, fate brought them together in another corner of the world, as their travel plans collided.

As for me, after I returned from the North East, I started something I had only been thinking of for years - writing and taking my photography seriously once again.

That’s the story behind this picture and this post. And as I type this, Chevy and Paul are probably upto no good in Montenegro. Hopefully one day we all will meet again, together in one place and talk about how spending those few days at Nino’s house in Nagaland was one of the best things that ever happened to us.

Chevy’s travel exploits can be followed here — Link, and Paul’s here- Link