A backpack and two wheels

23-year-old Avinash Vellore recently travelled from Hyderabad to Calcutta on bicycle and then he took a flight to Bangkok. From Bangkok, he again bicycled to Cambodia to South Vietnam to Hanoi at next to no cost. How did he manage that, you wonder? He cycled and couchsurfed almost all of the way.

The B.Com graduate after spending a year in the corporate workforce decided to take a break and explore the world without breaking the bank. “I had never travelled abroad before, and I thought it would be a good idea to explore a different world on a bicycle,” Avinash says.

He says that while he’s often hosted couchsurfers in the past, this was his first time being a guest in strangers’ homes. “Couchsurfing allows people to host guests in their homes, or be guests in others’ homes. I have been a host for a long time now and had people from many different countries stay in my home. I thought it would be a good idea to be a guest in other people’s homes for a change,” he says. He adds that a big cultural difference that he encountered was that all his hosts in India offered him food along with a couch to crash on, but that wasn’t the case abroad. There, he was just offered a tiny place to sleep, and it definitely wasn’t a luxury trip.

His travel and accommodation arrangements also meant that he couldn’t travel with a suitcase. “I had this tiny bag in which I carried a minimum number of clothes. I also carried a packet of detergent with me, and I washed my clothes and hung them out to dry whenever I got a chance,” he says.

A person must have some love for cycling to be able to make such extensive travel plans. When we ask him how it all began, Avinash reveals that he first started cycling with the intention of losing weight, but it quickly turned into one of his biggest passions. Now, he plans to travel across the globe on a cycle.

And challenges there were plenty. Not only did he have to brave the unpredictable terrain and climate, he was even robbed of his phone in Cambodia, but that didn’t stop him. The traveller believes that the experience has brought him closer to himself.

In the past, Avinash has travelled from Hyderabad to Rajasthan and then Delhi by motorcycle and even hitchhiked around Uttarakhand. We’re sure he’s already planning his next big adventure.