Hitchhiking From Bulgaria to Bhopal Without a Smartphone

In October 2013, Boris Kanev and Marta Samalea set off from Bulgaria with a simple mission - to reach India without taking a plane. The two spent the next 511 days on the road, walking and hitchhiking across Asia until they finally entered the country via Myanmar. As they travelled across some of the remotest parts of the world, they looked up maps, let their families know they were still alive, and even updated a blog, things we all do while travelling. But they made one change you and I perhaps wouldn't even dream about - they did all this without a smartphone.

We first met them in Bhopal earlier this year, and got to talking about their journeys. Since then, we've exchanged a few emails as well, and pieced together their journey, and how they managed to jugaad (improvise) a working Internet connection as they hitchhiked across most of Asia, despite not having what most people would consider an essential companion. The two aren't against using technology, but they just didn't feel that a smartphone would be essential to their travels. Instead, a netbook, a DSLR camera, and an ebook reader were all the gadgets they carried during their trip, aside from old Nokia phone "with an unreliable battery and a failing charger," Kanev told NDTV Gadgets over email.

Kanev and Samalea say that daydreaming about faraway travels has always been a good pastime for them, and a few days after they first met, both thought of hitchhiking to India.
"We both wanted to reach the subcontinent overland, to take every step, and cross each border, to fill the map with pictures of real places, flavours and faces," writes Samalea. "An old map of Asia, invisible routes and more imagination than certainty set the travel plan in motion."

During the course of their journey, Kanev and Samalea realised that not carrying a phone has quite a few benefits. "Probably the main advantage is that we spend more time looking out of the window than into a screen. There is a certain joy in disconnection, in spending days in nature without ringtones or the chance to check Facebook," Kanev writes. "You just live your days fully in the place where you are without the temptation of continuously browsing out of habit rather than need. Plus you don't even have to worry about finding a plug to charge your device."

Along the way, the couple maintained a blog, called Roving Snails, where they'd post advice for other travellers, write about interesting encounters with people and animals in various places, and even post recipes for hitchhikers. But updating the blog, and mailing friends and family so they would know the couple was fine, were just two things that would have been easier for Kanev and Samalea if they had carried a smartphone.