“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”.
CouchSurfing encourages cultural encounters and not just sampling of touristy delights. When someone opens their door for you in a strange land, you don’t just get food and a couch to sleep in. You also get to drive off the done-to-death track. Harmeet Singh, a 27-year-old businessman from Delhi, did just that when he went visiting Canada last year. “It was the second time I was visiting Quebec but I got in touch with a local CouchSurfer. She took us to an island far away from the tourist jaunts. We drove all around the island and lazed on the lovely beaches. It was a completely different experience. I wouldn’t have had it if I didn’t have a local person showing me around,” says Singh.
The story of how this group of wanderers came to being goes like this. A few years ago, Casey Fenton, a computer programmer from US, was on his way to Reykjavik, Iceland. He had no place to stay and no desire to get stuck in the tourist-only haunts of the city. Fenton decided to email 1,500 students in Reykjavik, hoping that someone would be willing to let him stay in their house. It worked. An email dialogue followed and soon the students wanted to show Fenton their version of the city. That’s when he decided that he wasn’t going to spend hours in crummy hotels or run around a new city on a blink-and-you-miss-it tour of its various attractions ever again. Fenton was going to live with the local people, savour each area’s flavour and start a cultural interaction. In January 2003, he brought this experience to fellow travellers through the Internet and couchsurfing.com was born.
If you have to join this group, all you have to do is sign up. You can then contact the community of the place you want to visit or search through profiles to find the person you think is most suited to host you.
Travel guide
“CouchSurfing is about regaining trust in the world. At a time when everybody lives in fear of the other, it shows that there are good people everywhere who are willing to share their home, stories, feelings and lives,” says Spyro Manson, a ‘nomadic ambassador’ for the site in Vienna.
Idealism apart, the site does have a referral and verification system to sift people who could misuse the network. For verification, you have to pay a small amount to the site through your credit card. Using this information, it checks if the name and address you have provided is correct. When you travel, you get to rate the host and vice versa. This rating then helps other travelers decide who they want to stay with. The site also has a network of local ambassadors, people who are most active on the site and know their areas well.
“But there are security issues,” says Dipayan Sen, a CouchSurfer from Mumbai. “Some people have different intentions,” he adds. “If any body complains to us about any misdemeanour, we contact the local ambassadors and the international administration and delete the profile of the person responsible.”
As she lounges in the south Delhi home of her CouchSurfer buddy Nilima (name changed), New Zealander Clare O’Rourke is eager to tell you how the website salvaged her trip. “I wanted to experience what the tourists did in Delhi. Sure enough I landed at Paharganj. But the tourists never spoke to each other; there was just no interaction.” Even the sites mentioned in the guidebook didn’t match up to the Indian experience O’Rourke was looking for. She went online and got in touch with the local CouchSurfing community—and found her friends. “I never expected to get such a welcome. If it hadn’t been for CouchSurfing, I would probably have left India the next day.”
As CouchSurfers don’t tire of saying, this is no Orkut. This website enables you to get out of the virtual space and brings you face to face with real people, quirks and all. “CouchSurfing is where you go to meet new people offline. You do not just keep in contact with people you already know,” adds Manson.
For people who decide to play host, the experience is as rewarding as when they give in to the tug of wanderlust. Says Arijit Ganguly, a 26-year-old Delhiite, “In 2006, I played host to an Italian. The FIFA World Cup was on and together we watched Italy win. She went to the local store, bought supplies and cooked a meal of pasta and wine for us. She shared her happiness with me,” says Ganguly. That’s what probably sets apart the CouchSurfing experience from routine travel. It brings you closer to people and gives you a chance to share their lives, their happiness—and in Dipayan Sen’s case—even their life-altering journeys.
A few years ago, a young man from France, Renaud Rannou, contacted Sen through the site. “He said that he had been born in India but his mother had abandoned him. A Christian charity had taken him in and later a French couple adopted him. He wanted to come back and visit that charity again,” says Sen. It was a daunting task. Sen and Rannou trawled through the records of all charities in Mumbai. After days, they finally found a small shelter in Dadar, where Rannou had started his journey.
Couchsurfer lore is full of stories of generosity that have moved travellers. Dhayani, for example, recalls how difficult it was to find vegetarian food in China and how his hosts helped him out. “They scribbled down a list of sentences I could try at food kiosks and it worked,” adds Dhayani. “I gave them a miniature replica of the Taj Mahal to show my appreciation.” Says Sen, “When you host someone, it’s not only for fun and hospitality. It’s about responsibility. The experience you give to your surfer is the impression of the country and culture he takes back with him.”
But the website isn’t just limited to those passing through. Members of the site regularly meet in ‘real’ time to interact, share travel stories and plan their next sojourns. The ‘collectives’ hosted by the site in different parts of the world usually sees swathes of people getting together.
In India, however, the numbers aren’t that impressive. “We meet once a month in Delhi. Usually 10 people come, sometimes the number doubles,” says Singh. “There is only one thing to talk about. Travel. I like it when few people come, it gives you a better opportunity to know them,” says Dhayani. CouchSurfing also forges friendships that last. “If you have hosted someone, they write to you once a month and tell you about their lives,” says Dhayani.
When your bonds stretch around the globe, the world does become a smaller place. “You don’t even have to travel. Surfers come and talk about their experiences. You listen to them and move with them. You travel on your couch,” says Ganguly.
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