IITGN students backpacked to explore India in 42 days

A total of 84 students in 27 different teams undertook the Explorer Fellowship this summer and travelled across different parts of the country to learn about diverse cultures and lifestyles.

All the 27 teams comprising total 84 students who undertook the Explorer Fellowship of the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) this summer, recently presented their journey experiences and learnings with the community through short video documentaries, on September 21, 2019.

Explorer Fellowship is one of the flagship summer programs of IITGN which aims to encourage students to explore and absorb different aspects of life in order to increase their societal connection. The institute supports its students to travel for six weeks across the length and breadth of the country during their summer break so as to get them introduced to diverse cultures, lifestyles, people, and places of India. As a part of this adventurous fellowship, students must travel to at least six states and cover at least one state in the Northern, North-Eastern and Southern parts of the country on a given budget. The entire trip is to be planned frugally, the students have to travel by sleeper class on trains or by state government buses, and stay at low-cost accommodations such as youth hostels, homestays, and dharamshalas. Each team also decides a theme for their exploration trip.

The students covered various states and remotest places of India including Agra, Varanasi, Mirzapur , Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh; Jaipur, Alwar, Makrana in Rajasthan; Delhi; Mcleodganj in Himachal Pradesh; Datiam, Indore in Madhya Pradesh; Jalgaon, Ajanta-Ellora caves, Khed Shivapur in Maharashtra; Kolkata, Jalpaiguri, Siliguri, Malda, Sundarbans in West Bengal; Konark, Puri in Orissa; Guwahati, Majuli island, Sualkuchi in Assam; Cherrapunji in Meghalaya; Gangtok in Sikkim; Kohima, Khonoma in Nagaland; Gaya, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur in Bihar; Borra caves in Andhra Pradesh; Hyderabad in Telangana; Mysore, Hampi in Karnataka; Thiruvananthapuram, Idukki, Kottayam, Kumarakom in Kerala; Aliyar, Coimbatore, Kanyakumari, Thoothukudi, Rameshwaram, Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu; Puducherry; among others.