Wandermile conducts Chennai’s first travellers conclave to inspire and aspire

On the world tourism day this year, a Chennai based budding travel start up 'Wandermile' decided to take a route untravelled and organised the first Indian Travellers' collective meet up in the city.

The organisers and co-founders of Wandermile, Rekha Raja and Rakesh Rajan, passionate travellers themselves are much experienced in arranging trips scaling length and breadth of India and even foreign lands. However, they felt the need for it be spoken about.

“We wanted to bring together the entire community of new age travellers, who dare dangerous paths and treacherous trails with millions of stories to share. We wanted to create a forum to discuss, share the knowledge that the travel enthusiast had to give out” says Rakesh.

“Social media like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest speaks in length about a person’s travel journey but personal experience and connecting with people always has its own charm”, Rekha added.

The venue, Backyard - a two storeyed building with the top portion (where the event was conducted) designed to resemble a shack like structure with handcrafted decorative lighting, cozy cushions and mattresses arranged across the floor for a dozen to sit and chat happily. The ambiance gave out the vibes of a camp fire set up on a hill station.

As time passed the crowd gradually began to swell up and people from different walks of life could be spotted at the venue.

Couple of heavily bearded men with typical biker look were discussing about their bikes, few young college crowd ganged up together sharing pictures of some trip they recently took up, a 70 year old travel buff keenly watching two young hipster looking boys clad in leather jackets and last but not the least, few neatly dressed software professionals, their shirt tucked in and glasses right on the point.

Wandermile had invited some of the vividly experienced travellers to share their experience with crowd that day.

Srinivasan Kasyap, an ardent two stroke bike lover has a team called Roaring Riders, which has like minded members willing to take up challenges and endure the tough ride.

“Pure passion, two stroke oil and smoke, this is the definition of a complete travel for me. It all started 14 years back with just 5 friends. Now, the Roaring Riders has more than 200 members and we ride for a cause, promoting road safety”.

Kasyap, father of two also said that even his daughter is taking interest in his two stroke beauty, but in her own way. She chooses her ride everyday to school from his collection of 9 gorgeous bikes.

One of the inspirers, Sujata Vijay, who is a 40 year old mom took up travelling when she was 35 and has been apart of lot of adventures including the trek to Everest Base Camp. She shared her experience of how budget travel changed her outlook giving her the sense of empowerment.

The audience were amused by the experience shared by these inspirers and the whole venue was in pin drop silence with occasional chuckles when some funny ‘double entredre’ cracked by the speakers.

Rohit, a former Lawyer in Mumbai who quit his profession to find solace in travelling. He shared an extensive video of his biking trip from Chennai to Ladakh done over a period of three months.

Kartik Kannan is a travel blogger reminisced his Goa trip and shared tips on dos and don’ts of camping. Similarly, Sudarshan who has traveled extensively across 4 continents in the last 15 years went on to speak in length about the cultural ethos and minefields one has to be sensitive about while travelling to other countries.

Each and everyone in that room had encountered something inordinate through travelling, which was evident when their eyes gleamed with passion and joy while they spoke about it.

As the evening came to  an end, this first meet up conducted by ‘Wandermile' turned out to be an eye-opener for many aspiring travellers. While the goodbyes were exchanged most of them promised to keep in touch through further such meetings in future.