We live in a small world. We also live in a riven world. Where common sense tells you not to trust too soon. Where footloose strangers with alien accents are best not welcomed home. But when Avinash Dhayani, a 21-year-old from Delhi looking to travel to China began trawling the Internet a few months ago, he found a group of travellers who were ready to junk common sense, open their doors and offer him a place to stay—for free. He found couchsurfing.com.

“I was in Bangkok and I had just decided to visit China as well. So I joined the group and requested someone to play host,” says Dhayani. At first, no one replied. “Then, Tinnie, a Chinese girl responded and her family invited me to dinner in Schenzhen,” he says. Over a sumptuous meal, Dhayani found the initial hesitant silences giving way to warmth. “Suddenly, before the evening was over, they had invited me to stay over. They even booked my train tickets for the places I wanted to see in China.”

Like the European backpacker and the American nomad on a shoestring budget, the Indian traveller is also logging into this hospitality exchange service organised, promoted and run by a host of volunteers. According to statistics on the site, it has well over 300,000 members around the world. In India alone, the website has over 800 members, covering every major city. An article carried in The New York Times last month described the project as “an ancient notion of hospitality...tucked into a modern paradigm, the social networking website”.

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