Living with a backpack for a year OYO Rooms
It was the monsoons of the last year when I left my last company and wanted to travel before I joined my new company. I had almost 15 days at my hand, but none of my friends could afford that many days leave at a short notice. Amongst the conundrum of a doing multiple split trips with friends to one long single solo trip, I decided for the later. I packed my backpack and booked a flight from Delhi to Bengaluru, I reached Bengaluru on the day of Karnataka Bandh due to Kaveri agitations. Luckily, I was able to find a bus to Coorg, at 10 in the night and left for there around midnight. The bus dropped me at Coorg at 5 in the morning and from thereon began my trysts with OYO Rooms.
Since, everything was unplanned and more of where the road takes you, the promise of Oyo of maintaining a minimum standard across all their rooms and the option of finding an OyoRoom at walking distance from all the important places at any time drew me to them. And of course the price was suitable for my needs, I could find hotels with prices as low as ₹700 albeit a bit expensive for solo travel but not by much. For the next few days I would book Oyo for all my stays from Mysore, to Wayanad to Kozhikode.
I returned to Delhi and joined my new company on August 10 in Gurgaon. Since Gurgaon was far from my home in Rohini, I started to look for a home in Gurgaon to stay on weekdays and return home on weekends. And for the first time in my life I got to know that being a male bachelor was a crime in the hunt for good house. Almost all the apartments have strict no bachelors allowed policy. So much for being free and open society.
In September my friend Ankit Aggarwal also joined me in the same company and we decided to hunt for house together. To search and visit houses and have a stress free weekends, we started to stay in Oyo Rooms on some week days till we found a place. We did finalise houses for 2–3 times , but deal wouldn’t be done for some reason or other. One particular interesting case was where landlord turned away at the last moment because he wasn’t comfortable to renting out to bachelor boys but was extremely happy to rent it out to Oyo for their Oyo Permanent stays ☹️!
Tired and disappointed with the outcomes, we were discussing the future steps, while having dinner. And then suddenly it stuck us why worry about finding a home if the way we are staying now is working for us! We don’t need to worry about amenities, wifi, maids, food at all and our travel to office was less than 15 minutes! Oyo provides complimentary breakfast and for dinner we could order anything. And then the question came how much it would cost? we started to churn out numbers, we would need it to stay at max for 4 nights and the average daily price for a room comes around ₹1000. So we could manage our stay for around ₹15000 for a month without having to worry about all the maintenance and we could stay in a new room every day! 🎉
It has been almost 8 months now, I have thoroughly enjoyed this experience. Many a staffs at different Oyos have started to recognise us and would provide us with our preferred rooms. For a bachelor one of the most important things in his life is internet speed, and though one doesn’t get blazing fast internet at Oyos it suffices the need. Heck I have pushed builds and had meetings via video conferencing at Oyo. Only downside I believe is you miss the home made dinner. I don’t know for how long I can continue doing this or for how long the No bachelors allowed policy will continue, but this certainly is an option for many bachelors like me who want to stay close to work on weekdays and enjoy at their home on weekends.
