Travel

Traveling through Europe is glamorous, expensive, and normally out of one's league—but not necessarily. For IIT alumna Kanak Agrawal, making the journey to four European countries for over a month cost her an iPhone. Her key: a resourceful, creative, and adventurous spirit to take risks or two beyond the comfort zone. Kanak's story verifies that one doesn't need to blow expensive budgets on adventures—meaning that smart planning, engaging with individuals locally, and living experiences over agendas is the way to proceed.

In 2017, having quit her job, Kanak traveled alone to Euro with a paltry sum of money. She visited the Netherlands, France, Prague, and Budapest in 35 days for a mere INR 1 lakh—inclusive of flights. It wasn't about saving money; it was about experiencing the people, culture, and food at each place in a real sense.

Volunteering

Kanak volunteered with an eco-village in the Netherlands, where she had food and accommodations taken care of for two weeks. "I didn't want to be a 'tourist' ticking things off a list," she said. Living in daily life, she was able to get around the countryside around Amsterdam for free, offering her time.

Couchsurfing

She then moved to couchsurfing and lived with locals in the Netherlands and Prague. She not only saved money but also met wonderful people who toured her around and who remain her friends for life.

Spontaneity and old friendships

Just 20 days before leaving Netherlands, she quickly booked a bus, and her friend happily hosted her. "Even if you’re planning everything, it’s always a good idea to visit an old friend in a new country, " she said.

Cheaper destinations

She also deliberately chose lower-cost regions. Budapest and Prague offered historic depth at non-European prices. Prague was an added 4-day extension from Paris to Budapest, so it made it stretch her dollars without giving up experiences.

Kanak quotes that her experience was a learning curve in flexibility and courage. She had no pre-formatted plans or pre-formatted itinerary—she started small, stayed normal, and let things occur naturally.

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.

Some of the greatest lessons in history didn’t stay in classrooms but walked across mountains. Mentioned in “The Record of the Buddhist Monasteries in Luoyang,” Bodhidharma did not travel but spread the message of peace and ahimsa across the globe, mostly in China. His journey wasn’t just physical; it carried ideas that changed cultures.  

The origin of the monk’s story remains a mystery to date. Contemporaries of Bodhidharma wrote two known extant accounts. According to these sources, Bodhidharma came from the Western Regions, and is described as either a "Persian Central Asian" or a "South Indian, the third son of a great Indian king." Later sources draw on these two sources, adding additional details, including a change to being descended from a Brahmin king, which accords with the reign of the Pallavas, who "claimed to belong to a brahmin lineage." Bodhidharma was the one who traveled the sea/land route to China, intending to spread Mahayana Buddhism across the country. 

His contributions to the development of present-day Buddhism in China are unparalleled. He introduced Zen(Chan) Buddhism and popularized its concept across the land in the 5th or 6th century. Zen, in Bodhidharma's view, is not about intellectual study or reliance on scriptures, but about direct experience and seeing one's nature. His teachings included meditative practices rooted in discipline. He was connected with the Shaolin Temple, legendary for Chan psychology and martial arts. 

The account of Bodhidharma in the Luoyan Record does not particularly associate him with meditation, but rather depicts him as a thaumaturge. Thaumaturge, especially in Christianity, is the art of performing prodigies or miracles. More generically, it refers to the practical application of magic to effect change in the physical world. Historically, thaumaturgy has been associated with a supernatural or divine ability, the manipulation of natural forces, the creation of wonders, and the performance of magical feats through esoteric knowledge and ritual practice.

Just like the quote that says- “Wisdom knows no national boundary”, his journey shows how one person’s knowledge can reshape an entire civilization. 

What students can learn from his journey is that learning itself is not limited to geography. Ideas become richer when they travel and evolve across cultures. One should always be open to knowledge from unexpected places. 

A student needs to be Bodhidharma because their minds are curious, mobile, and open to cross-cultural learning. This would not only help sharpen the minds but also gain confidence. It is very important for one to be Bodhidharma in this time because “After all, the greatest minds never stayed in one place for too long.”

By Jishnu Mukherjee

Textbooks teach you theories. Travel teaches you reality. Traveling, even for short or local trips, offers powerful learning experiences that classrooms cannot always provide. Books help you gain knowledge, but traveling enables you to learn beyond books. The things you learn while traveling often leave a lasting mark, far deeper than anything learned in a classroom. This is very crucial and matters a lot for students in order for them to grow in life and career.

Travel exposes you to real people, cultures, stories, and lifestyles. These are the experiences that shape how a person would perceive the world outside that a book could have never been able to. For instance, learning a language. A book might help you figure your way through the vocabulary, but as it goes by, the quote- "The best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in the place, the people, and the culture that speaks it." While books just teach you theories, traveling teaches you adaptability, awareness, and emotional intelligence.

Traveling can teach you a lot of things in ways you would never expect it would. Visiting historical places makes history real. Interacting with new communities builds empathy and understanding. Student exchanges / educational trips foster curiosity and openness, which is very important for young minds for their healthy growth. Solo travel, group travel, or even volunteering somewhere builds independence and teamwork. These values and lessons are things no textbook can truly teach. 

Why does this matter for students? This helps discover interests and career goals. Students often get caught up in exams, curricula, and academic pressure, losing sight of their true goals or where their passions lie. Traveling does not just help them connect with life and nature, but themselves too. It encourages critical thinking, resilience, and confidence. 

Not all classrooms have four walls.

Travel is not just a break from routine; it’s an extension of your education. History has been a witness that the greatest learnings have always come from traveling. Some people barely know their hometown, simply because their lives revolve around work and routine. If you want to learn and grow better than people around you, it is by traveling that you will.

According to a study by Columbia Business School, students who studied or traveled abroad were significantly more creative in tasks that needed original thinking compared to those who didn’t. While there’s no "magic number," many psychologists and wellness experts suggest that taking at least 1-2 meaningful trips a year, even short ones, can reset your brain, improve mental clarity, and enhance perspective.

By Jishnu Mukherjee

Something interesting is happening in the way Gen Z in India is choosing to travel. More and more young people are packing a single backpack, booking one-way tickets, and heading out alone. Not with their families. Not with friends. Just themselves, a destination, and a lot of curiosity. Solo travel isn’t just a phase for this generation,it’s becoming a mindset.

For Gen Z, travel is less about luxury and more about freedom. They want to move at their own pace, decide their own itinerary, skip the crowded tourist spots, and maybe even change plans halfway through. The idea of being alone in a new city or surrounded by strangers in a hostel isn’t scary to them,it’s exciting. It gives them space to think, to reflect, to be exactly who they are without needing to perform for anyone else.

One of the most noticeable things about this shift is the rise of solo female travelers in India. This would’ve been almost unthinkable just a generation ago. Safety is still a concern, of course, but young women today are navigating it differently. They’re smart about where they go, they plan more carefully, they trust their instincts, and they have ways to connect with other women travelers online. A lot of them are choosing places like Kasol, Varkala, or Auroville, not just because they’re beautiful but because they’re known for being relatively safe and open-minded.

What’s changing, too, is how Gen Z defines travel itself. It’s not about checking off famous landmarks to collect Instagram posts. It’s about experiences. Volunteering at an animal shelter in the hills, Spending three days doing nothing at a beachside homestay, Talking to strangers over chai. Sometimes even traveling just to feel lost on purpose. That hunger for something real-not curated, not commercial, just real,is what sets Gen Z travel sets apart from previous generations.

Youth travel culture in India is becoming more flexible and more reflective. These young travelers don’t always have big budgets, but they know how to make it work. They’ll take the cheapest bus, share rooms with strangers, and freelance while traveling. It’s not about having money,it’s about making the trip meaningful.

And no, it’s not like every Gen Z is suddenly running away to the mountains whenever they feel like.Travel is still a privilege. Not everyone has the time, freedom, or support to do it. But those who can are starting to treat travel as something essential, not indulgent. Something that helps them grow up, not escape. And slowly, that’s changing how we all think about movement.

The rise of solo travel among Gen Z in India is about more than where they’re going. It’s about how they’re choosing to go. It’s about independence, confidence, and the belief that you don’t always need a plan,or a partner to go somewhere new.

So, when we talk about solo travelling in India, it’s more than a trend; it’s a reflection of a generation quietly reshaping what it means to explore.  These journeys aren’t about showing off or chasing picture-perfect moments; they’re about finding freedom, learning to trust your instincts, and discovering what really matters when you’re on your own. As more young Indians pack their bags and set out alone, they’re rewriting the rules of travel by proving that one doesn’t need a crowd to feel confident, or a big budget to feel alive. In the end, solo travel for Gen Z isn’t just about the places they visit, but about the stories they collect and the person they become along the way 


By Aditi Sawarkar  

In a society that is transforming with globalization, the conventional notion of education is very much in flux.  Digital learning resources, flexible working arrangements, and a growing appetite of families to educate independent, globally-minded learners has catalyzed a new educational philosophy: learning in motion. This mode of education, often thought of as homeschooling or worldschooling, liberates families to educate their children while traveling the globe.

As families place a higher importance on autonomy, individual learning experiences, and global awareness, many families are now choosing to travel the world while still supporting their children's ongoing education. This is not just sightseeing while trying to remember and comprehend the information in a textbook; it is a more holistic approach to how children learn best, by living, engaging, and growing in real life and experience. 

Reimagining Education: The Emergence of Mobile Learning

Traditional education has historically operated in a relatively inflexible framework that faced a number of challenges, such as the constraints of time (schedule), place (school), standardized tests, and a single curriculum for everyone. Because of this dissatisfaction, alternative systems of education are moving into a better position for families and kids.Parents are retrofitting their homes, RVs, vessels, and tropical hostels into their own classrooms.Children are doing algebra in the Alps, history in Rome, and marine biology on a beach in Bali.

What is Travelling Homeschooling? 

Homeschooling, in essence, is the act of educating children at home or in nontraditional settings, instead of sending them to a school. When you go this route while traveling, it means you're bringing educational material, curriculum, and teaching supplies with you as you travel from location to location.

This version of homeschooling might still utilize a formal curriculum and standardized testing, but it is done in flexible places, a beach in Goa, a cabin in the Himalayas, or a village in Tuscany.

What is Worldschooling?

Worldschooling takes it a step further. It isn't just location-independent schooling— it is using the world as the curriculum! Kids learn their history when they visit historic sites. Kids learn languages when they immerse with locals. Kids learn about biodiversity when they trek through jungles and nature walks.

Worldschooling encompasses curiosity, lived experiences and real interactions with the world and each other. It bridges homeschooling with the principles of unschooling, where learning is self-directed and engaged with lived experiences rather than textbooks.

Why Are Families Choosing Learning on the Move?

1. Flexibility and Freedom

Traditional schools often have rigid structures. Travel-based learning allows for families to create their own schedules, decide what and how to learn, and change focus based on their child's interests or the destination. Education becomes organic and fluid in motion.

2. Global Citizenship and Cultural Literacy

In an increasingly connected world, it is hard to put a price on real understanding of other cultures, histories, and perspectives. Children who travel experience real knowledge of the geography, customs, food, and language—learning that a textbook cannot recreate.

3. Personalized Learning

Standardized systems of education for children typically forget each child's own pace and style of learning. Homeschooling and worldschooling provide opportunities for different types of intelligences, whether linguistic, musical, spatial, kinesthetic or interpersonal, to develop more uniquely.

4. Emotional and Social Development

Even critique of homeschoolers being isolated and unsociable, travelling learners are much more likely to be flexible, empathetic and open-minded. Exposure to many people from diverse cultures, with different ages, and walks of life creates competence, communication and tolerance.

Experiential Learning

This is where worldschooling excels. Let's think about some examples of learning moments:

• Learning about World War II while in Normandy or Berlin
• Learning about ancient civilizations in Egypt, Rome, or Varanasi
• Studying marine biology while snorkeling in the Andaman Islands

• Studying ecology in the Amazon or Sunderbans
• Learning a language through everyday conversations in places like France, Spain or Japan
• Day trips, workshops, museums, community volunteering and food experiences become part of a daily, learning experience.

Real Life Examples

The Jain Family from Pune

The Jain family from Pune had been struggling for years with their daughter's desire to learn through conventional schooling. They finally decided to unschool by traveling across India for twelve months. The family has travelled extensively in India, where their 12-year-old learns history, by visiting numerous forts; their daughter, as a part of her learning language acquisition, now maintains travel blogs; their daughter is learning maths by budgeting for their travels and planning.

The Kapoor Family—India and Southeast Asia

The Kapoors were based in Mumbai and decided to travel across Southeast Asia for a year. Their kids, 10 and 13 years old, are engaging with the IGCSE online/curriculum. They visit temples in Thailand, study ecology in the rainforests of Malaysia, and chronicle their adventures! on a family blog.

The Martens—Europe by Caravan

The Martens are a UK based family of five traveling throughout Europe in a Motorhome. Their children learn through project-based learning, blending language immersion with cultural festivals, picnics in the park, and other adventures! The oldest one has even written a self-published e-book as a part of her learning!.

Difficulties and How to Solve Them

1. Legal Regulations

There are different rules on homeschooling in different countries. For example, in the U.S., Canada, and India, homeschooling is legal and relatively easy to navigate, but it is either highly regulated, or illegal in some European countries. Families should be informed and compliant with rules and regulations when moving or living somewhere.

Solution: Before moving to a new country for an extended period, join expat forums, homeschooling networks, or consult a legal expert.

2. An Academic Focus

It is easy to get wrapped up in traveling and lose the value of academically focused study. 

Solutions:  Have every family member balance their experiential learning with a structured couple hours of study/ academically focused work. Use online tutoring or virtual classrooms if necessary. 

3. Financial Sustainability

Travel is very expensive, especially with little people. 

Solutions: Many families sustain their travel lifestyle with remote work, freelancing, blogging, or teaching. Budget travel, slow travel (staying longer in one location), and house-sitting can also make traveling more affordable. 

Travelling as a part of Education ?

Traveling is no longer a diversion from education; for many families, it is also the journey.  Homeschooling and worldschooling through travelling signify and transition from passively receiving knowledge to actively engaging and curiosity-led learning. They are developing global citizens- children who are conscious, adaptive, empathetic and empowered.

Learning while on the go, as Abel (2021) articulates, isn't just an option, with the changes of the world to be conscious of, adaptation and global consciousness are now as vital as reading and numeracy, we are considering education models of all time.

As the saying goes, "Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer." For worldschooling families, richness is not just experiences, but education for life.

A Path of Lifelong Learning

Learning on the go is an audacious, nontraditional, and profoundly enriching decision. It dissolves the fake wall between "learning" and "living" and opens up new learning paths that are filled with possibilities. In truth, given how rapidly the world changes, it is likely that being adaptable, curious, and globally aware will matter more than remembering what happened with history, chemistry, or biology.

Both homeschooling and worldschooling while travelling do more than educate. They create learners that are not only academically competent, but emotionally competent, culturally competent, and globally competent.

As in the words of  St. Augustine: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”

For families on learning on the go, each day a new page and a new possibility.

ARTICLE BY- ANANYA AWASTHI