IITian Trades Corporate Life for Backpacking Adventure, Embraces Couchsurfing in India & Abroad

We all wish to live a city like a native. For IIT-Kanpur graduate Kanak Agrawal, it was also about connecting. Taking a risk that few of us would ever do, she abandoned hotels and hostels and lived with complete strangers—people whom she had only known over the web. What ensued was not just a frugal tip, but a journey that changed the way she looked at travel, trust, and human beings.

On Instagram, Kanak posted that she was during the summer of 2017 when she had quit her job and was on a month-long budget tour in Europe. During her travels, she had chanced upon Couchsurfing—where locals offer free accommodation to travelers. One woman she had met in Amsterdam had told her about it, and she went and joined, sending out a few requests. That was a lone action, she said, that turned everything around.

Before long, she was bedding down with strangers in Prague, Amsterdam, and Utrecht. They shared meals, toured the city, and exchanged stories she remembers clearly today. "Couchsurfing wasn't so much about being cheap. It was about connection," she said.

Then, the concept wasn't popular in India. But Kanak went ahead and experimented with it—and was pleasantly surprised to find hosts available in almost all the cities. Even when she moved to Mysore recently, she skipped the hotel and couchsurfed again. "I stayed with Bala for 4 days until I found a place to rent.".

He was like a friend in a new town. No sooner had she moved into her new place than she invited him in for supper. That humble supper was housewarming. "No big party. Just a homey supper with someone who made a new city feel a little bit like home."

In her blog, Kanak left readers wondering about a problem clearly puts individuals out of their comfort zones: "Would you dare to try this?"

Internet reacts

Comments were filled with a mix of emotions: excitement, questioning, and even anxiety. Someone commented that they'd been a member for 20+ years, and someone else mentioned their first couchsurfing trip in Indonesia and said they'd been so moved by the kindness of strangers that they hoped one day they'd be able to describe to Kanak how it had changed them.

Someone else admitted to being scared to do so but was urged to try it on their next trip. Another user asked a very pointed safety question about traveling as a woman in India.

Kanak responded she has always had a good experience and reiterated the necessity of carefully reading host reviews and communicating beforehand before making a booking. Another reader concurred with her response, further mentioning that the comments on the platform cannot be deleted or altered, hence it is even harder to fake or cover up obnoxious comments.