Have you tried talking to a human travel book?

According to travel blogger Aditi Sojatia, people find travel stories more fascinating when they hear them directly from the traveller. Aditi has shared her own stories from travels around the world at events in the city, where she participated as a human travel book. Like her, many seasoned travellers are turning into storytellers, as more Indoreans seek out events where they get to hear the first hand experiences of these travellers.We spoke to some of Indore's human travel books and their readers to find out more...
What the internet does not tell you
"I was flooded with questions about real life survival stories from my expeditions, and the readers kept digging till they got satisfactory answers," shares Madhusudan Patidar, a mountaineer who became the youngest Indian to climb Mount Everest through the North Ridge in 2017 and also holds a world record of spending 22 hours on Mount Kilminjaro summit. His thirst for travel and adventure began quite early in life, so he has a plethora of tales for those who want to listen. "When I was a book, the readers kept asking me to tell stories that they won’t find on the internet. They asked me to tell them about climbing 7000 meter and above peaks. No blog account gives the space to describe how exactly one is supposed to walk on such expeditions. And here, they could hear me and even ask for a demonstration," Patidar recalls.

Curiosity is one the primary reasons why everyone is preferring human books. Nitesh Singhal, a college student who attended Patidar's session, shares, "He told us how seven were supposed to climb Everest, but only three could make it. Of them one died and three had to make their way back to base camp. It was chilling yet fascinating to hear the stories of their survival first hand. We could also feel the emotion he felt when he described exhaustion, elation of making it to the top, sadness of losing a comrade to altitude sickness."
Questions get instant answers
Instead of reading a number of books, young travellers prefer instant answers to their queries. Aditi Sojatia, who has become a travel book twice shares, "Most of the sessions boil down to budgeting and managing finances while travelling - especially outside India. The readers want to know how to become a travel blogger and how to get bigger travel companies to invest in them. I keep giving them reality checks that everybody who turns into a blogger doesn’t get that opportunity." She also states that most of them want instant answers on the process of deciding destinations and managing their food preferences. "Whenever I plan my trips, I read quite a few blogs about the destination, online.

Since Aditi is so well travelled across Europe, India and other countries, I attended her session to get all my answers. She discussed not only the beauty of the places, but also gave a break up of finances to managing being a vegetarian in countries where meat is a staple," says Tanvi Chaudhary, a travel enthusiast. Another attendee of such sessions, Abeer Verma feels that these books even provide necessary tips and hacks. "Pro-tips right out of the horses’ mounth is much handier than poring over one link after the other. In one of the sessions, one traveller told of the secret of Spiti itinerary, and how we can avoid some places that are just too mainstream and that people go there only to get that one pic clicked. He suggested to go for better unexplored destinations. And I followed it."
Misconceptions are broken
In the Indore chapter of Travel Tales 4.0, Shaista Dhanda, a travelling English educator who travels to remote locations to teach, combines her passion and profession perfectly. She busted quite a few myths and pre-conceived notions one might have about travelling. "Of course many of them asked how to keep their travelling and earning from it. But I made them understand that even though you get paid, you have to fend for yourself for basic necessities. I use local transport, eat local and prefer backpacking to sustain longer at these remote locations," says Dhanda.

Similarly, Aditi also recounted her experiences of being an Indian traveller in foreign lands, "People from other countries view us either in a very positive way for our culture or detest us for being loud and crass at tourist destinations. I told this to my readers because they should know how to conduct themselves in such countries." And indeed, many prefer busting of these misconceptions. "I feel such sessions help us plan our trips better because many of us dread the unknown. And listening to these travellers helps us avoid unfortunate incidents as much as possible," concludes another travel enthusiast, Affreen Khan.
"The trend of having seasoned travellers or mountaineers talk about their travel experiences in informal groups is on a steady rise in Indore. Two years back, only 5-6 people would be interested in these. But now at least 10-15 people sign up for such sessions."
- Madhusudan Patidar, mountaineer