Atul Goyal

Category: Travel

  • Pune to Goa cycling trip – bliss in the western ghats.

    [Hi there! Unlike all my past posts, this time I’m going to try something new while writing this post. I’m just going to pretend that I’m talking to my cycling partner on the trip – Nupur, recalling the whole experience. Hope you like reading this new style…]

    Yo Nupur!

    I finally sat down penning my memories from the trip. I don’t think I’d be able to do full justice to the amazing experience but I guess I’ll still give it a try.

    I remember how it started with you asking whether I’d be interested in a cycling trip. And without a second thought, I said YES, even before you mentioned where we’d be going!

    Each of the places we visited was completely new to me, and so was the excitement.

    Remember the first day when we started the ride from Chandni chowk of Pune towards Mulshi?

    We started early morning and stopped for breakfast at this Marathi dhaba which served an amazing Puran poli. Did I get the name right? Also that serving of desi ghee from which, I happily ate not just mine but your part of it too! Good thing I don’t worry about putting on weight. 😂

    That filling breakfast was finger licking good! Was it the best we had on the trip? Was also good for our tight budget.

    Soon after that, we were pushing uphill for the climb along Mulshi lake. Those jaw-dropping views from the top made every uphill pedal totally worth it.

    Someone rightly said that the best view comes after the hardest climb…

    Hello breathtaking views…

    That dog who ran a half-marathon with our cycles along the beautiful routes through those remote villages?

    I swear he was running so close to the cycles that one of us could have easily tipped over. Though I still feel sorry for him to have followed us when we had nothing for him to eat. Poor chap kept following in anticipation.

    Or maybe he was just escorting us to make sure we cross that territory safely. We’d never know. How awesome it’d have been, if I had the superpower to understand dog-speak. 😎

    As we moved towards Lonavala, there was a downhill diversion bringing us to this dam where we saw our first real heavy downpour.

    Those endless buckets of water being poured from somewhere up in the sky. Isn’t this the place where we ditched using the rain jackets? What a blissful place and time it was! Honestly I had even forgot when was the last time I enjoyed rains so much. It felt energizing. Like something with a power to make a dead alive…

    Hello rains…

    So what if this diversion turned out to be the wrong one. Well yeah except the part where we had to ride back steep uphill.

    Riding further ahead amidst all that beauty, there was a moment when my stomach did a knock-knock to remind me that it needed refueling. Like urgently. Those few kilometers ride were a real test where I could sense my intestine had started digesting itself just to keep some energy flowing.

    That highway we later joined was the much needed silver lining. Was good riding on smooth roads after almost a whole day of riding through the village roads. Icing on the cake were those gorgeous waterfalls which kept us company throughout this stretch.

    Joining the road to Lonavala

    Finally we arrived at a roadside dhaba where, being extremely hungry, I lost count of how many vada paavs we had. I think this is when I finally got used to, and accepted vada paavs as a proper meal. Yeah I guess it is indeed something one can actually survive on.

    Climbing further towards Lonavala we met this heavy fog with negligible visibility. Not to mention that sudden rush of all those people which was a stark contrast to the region we earlier rode through where we barely saw anyone for hours.

    As soon as we reached Lonavala, the “buckets” followed us again and we quickly looked up a hotel which would be our resting place. And remember that generous man at the reception, who, on seeing these two cyclists coming in the heavy rain, gave us a good discount, which in his own words was out of the respect for what we were up to.

    And with a much needed rest, we finally called it a day! Hot shower, a massage with that magic oil, while recalling what a great day it had been, brings a joy of victory. Well celebrated with an awesome meal followed by chocolate, and a good night’s sleep excitedly looking forward to the next day of adventure…

    [The hike + run to Rajmachi fort, the phones getting waterlogged one by one, and a lot more all the way to chasing the flight in Goa on cycles, to be continued…]

  • Carrying bicycle via flights in India

    Okay so I needed to carry my cycle from Delhi to Pune and that’s when I got some suggestions from my cyclist friends about which airlines to go with. After checking with multiple airlines, these are the responses I got.

    Next up, Vistara

    https://twitter.com/airvistara/status/1138267612175929344

    And then Air Asia

    which as per that page, came out to be something like this:

    Sport Equipment
    15kgINR 1890
    20kgINR 3190
    25kgINR 5090
    30kgINR 6390
    40kgINR 9390

    After starting to loose hope, finally Air India comes to the rescue.

    (I also called them up just to be doubly sure)

    So as of June 2019, Air India seems like the most cost effective option considering that the flight ticket on AI was only 300 Rs costlier than the cheapest option while it also includes a free meal.

    So check the prices, and if AI is not costing more than the cost of carrying cycle with the other airlines, maybe just go with AI for a change? 🙂

    Happy cycling!

    PS: Thanks to Nupur Singh, Pratyush Thakur, and Gaurav Duggal for their inputs and help.

  • A year since I left my job

    Today morning a notification from Facebook caught my attention. It reminded that it’s been one full year since I had taken the sabbatical from my job at MobiKwik.

    Time “can” fly!

    I had earlier seen how amazing the experience of traveling in the mountains of Nepal was. Where I went solo trekking the Annapurna circuit during a month-long break earlier that year.

     

     

    The distraction-free time in the mountains of Nepal helped me introspect about what things I value in life and how I’d like to change the priorities. (In retrospect, the head was still not 100% clear at this time, which eventually did happen months later. More on this some other time!)

    I knew gathering material possessions didn’t excite me.

    I could live frugally.

    I had some savings that I could use efficiently.

    And I had this wanderlust (what a cliche this word has become!). To put it differently, I like traveling far, and experience the hidden secrets of nature as well as those of different cultures. Knowing that it would inevitably come with some extreme challenges — which attract the crazier me like anything!

    So as I came back home from the last day at the office, I packed my bag to leave for Ladakh, with a one-way ticket, where I was going to trek the Markha valley. This is one of the classic tea-house trails of India and the experience was indeed very rewarding!

     

     

    After Markha valley, I took a bus to Spiti and in all, I stayed for more than a month. Tried to capture parts of my Markha and Spiti experience in this video if you’d like to see.

     

    After Spiti, it was a time for North-East and I left with another 1-way ticket for Sikkim.

     

    I made some amazing friends, got to see incredible places and since I didn’t have any fixed plan I ended up spending more than a month in Sikkim and Darjeeling. After which, I went for a quick week-long trip to Meghalaya with new friends I made in Sikkim.

    During these travels I had been validating the idea of a travel startup that I’m currently working on, while talking to different travelers. Those discussions and the problems I had myself faced showed signs that there is a gap in travel discovery that I can probably help plug.

    By the time I came back home, it was winters and a dream in queue was to see Kinnaur and Spiti in winters. Time to fulfill the dream! Landing in Kinnaur with non-stop snowfall was an out of the world experience. Challenging, yet extremely rewarding. And while it was my third trip to Spiti, the surreal winter Spiti had great adventures in store.

     

     

     

    Coming back home was when I talked to — my now cofounder — Prakhar who was also excited about the idea of MyWanderlust.in and since we had closely worked with each other, we knew that it was a perfect team. And he put in his papers!

    After a discussion with folks at my office, we agreed on ending the sabbatical and me officially resigning from my job, as I was now going to continue with the startup with no plan to join back. It was the conclusion of my four-years amazing time at MobiKwik. (Thank you for the great company Kwikers!)

    For some guidance on building the Minimum Viable Product, we applied for the 10 week remote program called StartupSchool by YCombinator and luckily got in! Our presentation at the end of the program was our first showcase of the product to the outside world.

    After spending next three months getting our startup incubated and working with a few brilliant interns during summer break at the very helpful incubation center of our alma-mater IIITD, we decided that we wanted to continue working on the startup while traveling the country instead of calling one place our base.

    And with that started our South India trip where we are making progress with the startup while also exploring this amazing part of the country.

     

    Gokarna 🌴 . The never ending rains of monsoon do create a little bit of annoyance at times but the scenery becomes so much more beautiful! These beautiful beaches make it a fine place to relax and unwind for a few days. That thick layer of clouds making a line parallel to the horizon seemed interesting to me, and hence the shot. 🙂 . This photo was clicked from Zostel Gokarna, which is located at the top of a plateau, which separates Gokarna beach from the Kudle beach. The beach visible in the photo is Gokarna beach. . PS: I like the way the @zostel guys pick properties at best locations everywhere! (The praise doesn’t mean it’s a paid post though. I just like Zostels! ) . #gokarna #beach #landscape #monsoon #incredibleindia

    A post shared by Atul Goyal (@atulgoyal_ag) on

     

    In fact, I’m typing this post listening to the sound of the rain outside the window of my room in Alleppey which has been our temporary base for more than a week now, and where we also launched beta version of MyWanderlust. (the announcement of beta here).

    After having explored the beaches, the backwaters and the amazing Kerala cuisine in this welcoming slow paced city of Alleppey, it’s time to move out and resume exploring more of this Gods Own Country, Kerala.

    Next hop — Varkala, here we come!

    —

    If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Let me know if you’ve any questions in mind or anything I could help you with.

    Also, if you like, checkout my travel journeys. Or create yours and MyWanderlust will help you share your travel experiences with the world! Or start here for some travel inspiration.

     

    My travel page on MyWanderlust

     

  • Bike ride. Leh to Pangong Tso.

    Pangong lake bike ride
    That ride to Pangong Tso. Ocean of memories associated with it!

    [Prologue: This is from my first trip to Ladakh. I was with three other friends and we did the Delhi – Srinagar – Ladakh – Manali circuit in a car. The Srinagar-Leh highway as well as Manali-Leh highway are both amazing for road trips with super awesome views, but more on that some other time.]

     

    So the previous day we were in Leh and we were roaming around in the town trying to find bikes for a bike ride to Pangong lake. We initially planned to leave the car back in Leh and pick it up when we come back to the city. We went to every single bikes-on-rent shop and garages, many of them multiple times trying to find a bike which wasn’t booked. And even as the dizziness due to the high altitude of Leh was starting to wear us out, my determinism to do the bike ride refused to come down.

    This is 2014 so one of my earliest travels in the remote mountains and was kind of a dream trip.

    As the sun went down and Leh became darker, my friends decided that they’d all just go to Pangong in the car and forget the bike ride. But looking at my craze I did get a company to keep looking for “one” bike.

    In the end, we found a Royal Enfield classic “Desertstorm” which is a 500cc beast. It just so happened that I am not the biggest fan of Royal Enfield and had actually never even rode ANY Enfield before! And here was a 500cc beast, apparently ready for this new rider.

    As it was clear that there is no other bike available in the town, it was either this bike or no bike. Didn’t take a long time before a decision was made. 😉

    So I brought the bike to the guesthouse and we all called it a day for the next day’s journey.

    Early next morning, I, on the bike and the other three in the car started together and went to the fuel-station to load up the required ammo. The plan was that we’ll go together but somehow we got split up and couldn’t find each other on the whole route. And there is no phone network outside Leh.

    So as I started moving out of Leh, I was getting a little better control of the bike which kept on improving during the long ride.

    Come Chang La (5360m) and the really bad stretch of road along with the unbearable cold wind hitting directly against the chest made it a bit challenging. I wasn’t sure whether the others were ahead of me or behind so I took a break at the pass. Riding the troublesome past several kilometers making it here was a huge milestone, and even though I was hoping that I might see the others here, that didn’t happen.

    I was hungry and the eatery here was closed but I did get some water to drink.

    Chang la

     

    With a salute to the army folks standing near a bunker at the pass, I resumed my journey. The views from up here were nothing I had imagined. (The views throughout the route were a treat for the eyes and I didn’t bother taking the camera out of rucksack and as a result I don’t have any photos of the route except those from this break at Chang la).

    I knew what Ladakh was going to be like but seeing the real thing and that too riding on two wheels, was an out of the world experience.

    As the elevation dropped the breathing became easier and so did sensing of things around. After hours of endless no-man’s-land, I saw an army shooting range on my right and a small eatery on the left. Stopped for a while and ate maggie while listening to sounds of firing from the shooting range, arriving after bouncing off the opposite hill.

    The energy boost did make the ride from here on, way more enjoyable and the last stretch to the lake was a real delight.

    The first view of the huge Pangong Tso in the distance was nothing short of spectacular. As I made it to the lake I finally had a rendezvous with the gang with a huge, huge sigh of relief…

     

    Pangong lake
    The gang. With the beautiful Pangong in the background! Look at the color of the lake! Yep, it’s real!

  • Chansu – a beautiful village off any traveler map in Sangla valley

    Chansu Sangla
    Photo taken with self-timer from the top of a waterfall. The houses that you see is the village Chansu. Enjoying the vistas and the music produced by the waterfall with a fresh breeze of air serving as cherry on the cake!

    After a fateful turn of events during my month long stint in Kalpa, this Spring, I landed in Chansu.

    Chansu – a village in Sangla valley – reached via a winding dirt road from the Baspa II dam just before Sangla, taking you higher and higher till you arrive at this serene place. Chansu is a magical place only locals know about. There are no hotels, no guesthouses and not even homestays.

    Without any dependency on tourism, the economy is almost exclusively dependent on agriculture which primarily includes apple, Apricot, peas, potatoes, and other vegetables.

    An apple in the making. (More: Arrival of Spring – Photoblog from the beautiful land of Kinnaur)

     

    I had met this amazing family in Kalpa and getting invitation to come to their village of Chansu was something I just could not reject.

     

    I got a chance to spend a couple of days here, staying at Simi’s great-grandparents’ house. Getting to see the life of people in these remote mountains up-close, and getting to learn new things in the process was an amazing amazing experience. And when I wasn’t at the farm or at the house, hiking around at the outskirts of the village was my favorite pastime so much so that time just flew!

     

  • How an evening at Chandratal became an adventure we didn’t see coming…

    Different people find their dose of adventure in a wide variety of experiences. This is a story of how an evening at Chandratal became an adventure I can never forget…

    This time of the year. Two years back.

    The faint visuals of the evening at Chandratal still keep popping up as part of memories. Sometimes when I’m revisiting the photos. And at other times subconsciously…

    It was my first trip to Spiti. I was traveling with my younger brother, Gaurav and my friend, Chirag. I didn’t know of Spiti long before that. Didn’t go with much preparation. Didn’t factor in the EXTREME cold that nights at these high-altitude regions unleash even at a time when the plains are burning hot…

    So as fate had it, it was going to be a full-moon night the day we were at the Chandratal lake. As some of you would know, camping around the lake is banned so this base camp is the campsite. This campsite is like just a kilometer before the lake. From there, it’s an easy walk to reach the lake.

    Many of you would also have experienced the drastic drop in temperature that happens at such a high altitude as soon as the sun goes down.

    As naive as we were, we planned to walk to the lake in the later part of the day so that we reach there a bit before the sunset, enjoy the views for a while, wait for the sunset and be back to the camp after catching a glimpse of the full moon. If I knew any better I’d have picked up every single piece of warm cloth we had in the bag back at the camp, and keep some extra quick energy food. Did I tell you we were so naive?

     

    Chandratal lake

    As we reached the lake, with the sun reaching for the horizon, the whole setting was that of a surreal landscape. The breeze flowing past the sublime surface of the lake, the surrounding vistas and the golden rays of the sun… it was nothing short of an out-of-the-world experience.

    We could see more people around the lake by this time. Some of them were also looking like having conquered the world. There was this big group of foreigners getting photographed with a huge flag of India. I could relate to their joy.

    Only till we were blessed by the Sun.

    Thanks to the thin atmosphere, this region hardly retains any heat and un-surprisingly it drove every single person around us, back to their relatively comfy shelters. Except for three souls. Who were determined to catch a view of the moon. Yep, the three naive ones…

    As it got colder and colder, with the wind getting even stronger, we were losing energy fast. We had a packet of dry fruits. Which got finished in a blink.

    We hoped that it would become bearable if we don’t face the direct wind so we hid behind piles of rocks hoping to prevent ourselves from some of that nature’s fury.

    That too, didn’t move the needle.

    We kept trying different things but all efforts were in vain. Finally when we didn’t see anything working, realizing we had barely enough energy left to go back to the camp we decided to call it a day. It was pitch dark and we – the naive ones – didn’t have any torch. So we planned to use the phone flash as long as the battery lasts.

    Though walking was supposed to help keep the body a bit warm, we underestimated the cold. It was sucking energy fast. We were going numb…

    We walked and stopped, walked a bit more and stopped, to catch up with breath and regain some energy. The time was 8pm-ish and there was no sight of the moon. Not that that was our biggest concern though.

    What should have been like a half an hour walk, took endless time.

    Or so it felt.

    So a point comes when we are walking real slow and I’m thinking and rethinking whether we would make it or not, but thanks to the strong company of Gaurav and Chirag, we don’t lose hope even when we are drained of all the energy and body heat. Not even a single time did we mention to each other about any pessimistic thoughts. There was this unspoken fact all three of us knew that only thing that we can do is keep walking. And that’s what we did…

    A few minutes later we noticed some lights in the distance. Lights that must be coming from the dinner tents back at the campsite. It was clear that we still needed to walk a lot to reach those lights. And we had exhausted phone batteries by now. What were we expecting!? Of-course nothing lasts forever!

    The distant lights from the base were a sure hope, though. That we just need to keep following the zigzagging path faintly visible under the multitude of stars and keep heading in that direction down to the campsite…

    After an endless walk, just before we were about to reach the camps, the magnificent moon with all its glory arose from the mountains from our back side. Surreal, it looked!

    Coming back to reality we resumed our marching ahead to the campsite and eventually after what felt like an eternity we did make it to the camps.

     

     

    Was this whole experience something I’d choose to plan given an option? Probably not.
    Did I regret anything? No.
    Was the experience worth the trouble? Hell YES!

  • Arrival of Spring – Photoblog from the beautiful land of Kinnaur

    Melting away of snow with the arrival of Spring, brought a palette full of colors during my month-long stay in Kinnaur. Spring – such a lovely time to be in the mountains!

    apple flower
    An apple in the making. From Kinnaur – the land of Apples!

     

    The above one and the below one are photos of same branch of Apricot (khubaani) just 3 days apart!

    Apricot khubaani flower

     

    Plum flowers
    Plum flowers!

     

    Met this beauty on a hike to a waterfall in Chansu!

     

    chulli flower

    chulli flower
    And some lovely flowers of Chulli (wild apricot) growing on the roadside everywhere in Kalpa!

     

    Spring ❤️

  • Winter Spiti – Photoblog from the Wonderland!

     

     

    White Spiti
    Surreal White Spiti

     

    Buddha statue at Langza
    The statue of Buddha blessing the valley at Langza

     

    Key monastery
    Key monastery – the crown jewel of Winter Spiti

     

    Key monastery
    Key monastery – another view

     

    milky way
    Magical night sky at Kibber

     

  • Say Hello to Sameeksha, from Kalpa

    Meet Sameeksha, from Kalpa. She’s three yr old. We call her Simi, and she calls me Mamu. Simi is so dear to her parents that her Mom and Dad have told me so many stories about how she’s so important for them including the fact that they had planned her name which is a combination of the Mom and Dad’s name, if the baby turns out to be a girl which they really wanted, and that her birth date being 14th Feb is God’s gift to them.

    So Monday is her first day at school and we both have been running through alphabets and numbers for past few days, and she seems to be more than ready to start this journey we call schooling. She loves her yellow-pink bag which has a one eyed fish and tells me different stories about where the second eye went. She almost eats a page from her shiny new books when she sees a picture of a fruit against some alphabet. Heck, she also makes me eat those imaginary fruits! 😀 She’s so shy of getting photographed but loves seeing the photos I capture, so much that she tells me “Mamu ye to doggies hain. Ye wala photo achcha hai. Mamu ab moon ki photo dikhao. ab pahaad dikhao. ab baraf dikhao…” and gets this huge smile when she sees her own photos.

    As my time to move out of Kalpa was approaching, I wanted to gift her something. The dinner conversations with the family, the hardships of life in the remote mountains I’ve seen, did help me deciding what it’d be. And her parents, after some convincing, have been generous enough to allow me to do this. So I’ve taken up all her educational expenses. When I talked to her Dad about it, the first question he asked me – Simi rahegi to hamare paas hi na? I almost cried. Ofcourse she will!

    More than for Simi I think I’m doing it for myself. The thought of keeping this promise, year after year might just help me have an even stronger sense of mission in what I do. I might need to cut down on my personal expenses here and there and drop some luxury. Being able to support a kid’s education is surely worth lot more than any of that.

    Her Mom – I call her didi – asked me to stay in Kalpa at least till Monday to see her go school. And I’m here till then. Hope to see a day when all of the Indian society stops discriminating against the girl child and a girl’s education becomes equally important just like how it is for Simi’s parents. Love you Simi!

     

  • Why I took a sabbatical from my great going job.

    [This post, my reflection on why I’m doing what I’m doing, is in part inspired from Simon Sinek’s Start with Why.]

    “Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?”

    “Because it’s there”.

    That was the answer, a truthful retort, by the mountaineer George Mallory, which has since become a popular quote in mountaineering.

    I certainly don’t speak for all the adventure lovers out there, but to me personally, the reason I undertake challenges and adventures has evolved to go a bit beyond that.

    The challenges of startup life, with the obvious responsibilities that come along with the sense of satisfaction of making an impact in people’s lives, is – probably a bit counter-intuitively – addictive and also a real adventure in itself. Having been part of a startup right from its very early days, going through a journey which can be easily compared to a roller coaster ride full of super highs and lows has made me so used to looking for adventures that this was exactly the trigger that made me go on my first long trek – a month-long solo trek around the Annapurna Circuit and Annapurna base camp in Nepal, last year.

    With time, as MobiKwik grew and “I” grew with the growth of the company, I also met so many amazing people, many of whom I myself recruited. The whole journey has been an amazing learning experience and while starting-up was a difficult decision to make, what helped me was that I was allowed to take a sabbatical by my boss-cum-mentor while I find my way through this new adventure.

    The travels through those remote regions have been eye opening, a soul shaking experience for me. I got to see life in the remote regions, full of little moments of joys even amidst the extreme hardships. So much of what we take for granted back home in our city life, becomes a luxury in the remote regions. I’ll be honest and admit that there have been moments which were more like a question of survival than a blissful adventure. You don’t want to be in no man’s land, alone, out of water, out of breath, carrying your backpack, and clouds darkening every moment, not having any option but to keep pushing yourself a tiny bit more, and then some more.

    This was the beginning of a chain reaction. That journey through Annapurna region in Nepal was followed by me embarking more solo journeys through Markha valley, Spiti valley and some of the north-eastern states eventually lasting as long as 100 days of my time spent in the mountains, in 2016.

    While in the mountains, I had also been using the free time to think through an idea that I had been very excited about for a long time, which was to create an artificial intelligence – inspired by Jarvis – to help people “discover stuff” easier in a personalized manner.

    I had been thinking through and doing some MVPs with close friends on this and while there were some things that I needed to think through in more detail, in retrospect it was more like a “childhood crush” of mine. While I was refining the idea, I was hit by this another opportunity of solving a problem that I personally faced frequently, before and even during the travels, and could also get it validated with other travelers, during the discussions with several of them, whether seasoned or first timers.

    The gist is that I believe there is a huge scope of improvement in the way we discover travel destinations and do the further research required to make the travel a memorable experience. This is a space which I very closely relate to, and feel very passionate about. Any impact that I make here, whether it’s saving the time of travelers, helping them have a better experience or making a meaningful impact on the lives of people dependent on tourism as their sole or primary livelihood, would give me huge satisfaction.

    I’m currently in the process of listening to people I’m meeting, understanding the different problems much better and taking feedback on quick prototypes I’ve been building with which I do believe the travel research can be upgraded in a big and meaningful manner. So that’s what the website will do, it’ll serve as a travel guide and help with travel research.

    While currently, I’m mostly taking feedback in private, refining the focus, I hope to come out with an initial product in a few months time.

    PS: By any chance, is travel something that really excites you? Would love to chat!