It has been a while now that I have been an active member of an online travel related website called couchsurfing. It is mainly centered around providing travelers a "couch" to sleep on in your home when they're passing by your city. There are others like it, e.g. "hospitality club" or "be welcome". A simple google search might give you a few more. Check them out if it interests you.
Anyway, lets come back to couchsurfing. As in many online forums, almost anybody is free to join, so there are all sorts of people in there. Some very interesting folks, and some complete a-holes. There are many types of groups as well, with city groups being the most common. Accordingly, Bangalore also has its very own group (lovingly called the BangCS community). From my experience over almost 2 years, I have observed that the Bangalore community is among the best in the world – touchwood. We have a regular weekly meet every Wednesday evening at The Couch on MG road, which I try and attend whenever I feel up to it.
On the Wednesday of 23rd December 2009, I was not feeling particularly up to it, so I thought I'll give it a skip. But then I got a private message on couchsurfing from one Mr. Jonathan Yevin, who introduced himself as an American travel writer. He had just come to Bangalore, and was looking for people to hangout with. I told him about our weekly meet, and then thought maybe I'll just drop I to say hello.
Jonathan turned out to be an interesting guy with many travel stories to share. He seemed like a genuine person, and since he still hadn't found a place to stay; I offered him our couch for the night. He took up the offer and came home, and we started generally chatting about our travels (mainly his actually). It turned out that he had been traveling for more than 7 years now, and had been almost all around the world. For 5 months in a year he would run his landscaping business in New York city, and then travel for the remaining months.
But the most fascinating part of his travel was that he would travel without a bag. Yes, you read that right, NO BAG. All he would go around in was whatever he was wearing, his passport, his wallet (with some money and a credit card), his cellphone and maybe a guide book. He had been traveling this way for the last 5 years!
Jonathan totally redefined traveling light, and will remain a major inspiration whenever I'm going to pack another bag.
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