India (Vipassana, Tamil Nadu) → 2 weeks

Malaysia – Thailand – Laos → 2 weeks

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China

Mongolia – Kazakhstan → 2 weeks

Kirghistan – Uzbekistan – Kazakhstan → 2 weeks

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Azerbaijan – Georgia – Turkey → 2 weeks

Europe → 2 weeks

Let's have a look !

Our way will start in Tiruchirappalli, a city south of Auroville in Tamil Nadu. We are going to catch a flight there to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Traveling through Malaysia, we will end up in Thailand to meet one of our Auroville friends to chill a little bit on the beach together...! Afterwards we will continously head north to Laos where we hope to get our Chinese visa and then enter China. We will not spend a lot of time in China and will go pretty straight to Beijing to catch the Transmongolia train from there – a dream becomes true for us!

We will arrive in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and will work our way to the west where Mongolia shares a tiny border with Kazakhstan. And we will try to make another dream to come true. Julie's dream of riding a horse in the steppe of Mongolia! A friend of her may even join us for the occasion! In Kazakhstan we will travel south-east down to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to visit Hannah's friend. And we will probably leave Kyrgyzstan through Andijan, Uzbekistan. To reach the port Aktau in Kazakhstan, we need to cross Uzbekistan from the east to the west and then a small part of Kazakhstan again.

We will arrive in Baku, Azerbaijan, by ship. Then we will pass through Tbilisi, Georgia (we hope to meet there a friend of Hannah as well as a friend of Julie) to take the border close to Batumi to Turkey. Depending on the political situation in Turkey, we will cross from the eastest (Hopa) to the westest (Edrine) and passing through Ankara, Istanbul, maybe Bursa where Hannah studied and exit Turkey to go to Bulgaria or Greece... further than this we didn't plan yet!

By land

When we are telling our friends about our travel plan, one of the first questions which comes up is:

How did you come up with this idea?

Hannah already thought about it when she was in Germany. She traveled from Turkey back home to Germany after she finished her studies there. But this time she thought it would not be possible because she needed to be back in Germany in the beginning of April to continue her studies. But things changed…

It came to Julie's mind when she arrived in India - wasn't this year off the perfect opportunity to try this kind of adventure? Moreover, she really had the feeling to need this pilgrimage to come back, so as to find her home again, somewhere in Europe.

As two of our friends kept on joking about biking the way back to Germany, we started to talk and think about it again and finally made the decision to do it together!

Why? Ecological reasons (we don't want to fly and increase our Co2 footprint), as we experienced a lot here in Auroville we have the feeling we need more time to go back to “reality” than 12 hours, we want to see the different countries, customs, etc.., we want to spend more time together and visit some of our friends on the way back.

Changes of plan

The way was one of the most transiently things lately.

Plan 1:

We thought we will just head north, pass through Pakistan and Iran and take the original, old silk road… well then Hannah decided she really wants to visit her friend in Kyrgyzstan. Another problem was the Pakistani visa which can only be issued in your home country...

Plan 2:

So we thought we will head north and exit India through Kashmir to Tajikistan but due to the political situation which erupted a couple of months back this was not possible anymore.

Plan 3:

So a new route was needed and a couple who came by cycle from France to India told us they went through Nepal and China so we wanted to do this. Unfortunately the earthquake in 2015 destroyed the only road which connects Tibet and Nepal and has an open border for foreigners. Also to obtain a visa for Tibet would have been very difficult and expensive as you are only allowed to travel there accompanied by a tour guide.

Plan 4:

Next idea was to skip Nepal and go all the way to the north-east of India and pass there the border to China. But we figured out that these three borders are only open to Chinese and Indian people who are living in this area due to some political tension between India and China. After this we got quite devastated.

Plan 5:

The last shot we thought we would have is going to the north-east of India (Assam/Nagaland) and pass the border to Myanmar there but what surprise! This is not possible for foreigners either due to political tension between India and Myanmar…

Plan 6:

As there was no possibility to get out of India by land we decided to take a boat. We heard that there a ships going from Chennai to Andaman Island and from there Thailand and Malaysia would be really close. We were looking forward to this road a lot as the Andaman Island are supposed to be really nice, relaxed and great for scuba-diving. When we tried out to book tickets we saw that Port Blair in the Andamans is not an international port and therefore no ships will leave from there to Thailand or Malaysia.

Plan 7:

So our last hope was to find a ship from Chennai, Vishakapatnam or Kolkata to take us to Malaysia or Thailand. We searched for affordable ships for a month, called and wrote the different ports, asked friends, ask people who are sailing, used all the different resources we are having here in Auroville but we couldn't find a ship. Most of the ships from the west to Malaysia and Thailand only pass through Sri Lanka and to there is no existing ship connection from India due to the political tension (the war which lasted till 2009).

Plan 8:

We tried our best but it just seems that there is no way out of India by land or sea for us. That is why we finally decided to book flight tickets to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and from there our travel back to France/Germany will start.

The way

Therefore the drawing of our journey seems now quite adventurous and at least eccentric. We will travel eastward, then go up in a straight line northwards to Beijing. We will finally follow the famous railways of Asia and moving through the old Soviet Union to reach Europe.

Traces

Leaving (or not) footprints on the surface of the globe is our main concern. What should we leave of us and what can we take from the world? What is the picture of our passage? What image do we belong to?

Our footprint: what we are, what we want to be. As two 24-year-old women traveling back home alone, we would like to promote and encourage the women empowerment: it is something essential for us. Yes, we took the less dangerous way we could find; and no, it is not an easy way. But we believe that we should try without fear and without inhibition what is within our reach. Let's gor for an adventurous trace... because we are adventurer women!

In this way, we feel that we are part of the world. And as part of the world, we want to respect it: that is why we also would like to express our environmental and ecological concerns. Now a days, we have the feeling that it seems to be so easy, so cheep and so convenient to take a flight for traveling. People want to explore nice and wild places without realizing that we contribute to destroy it by using the most polluting means of transport. Our biggest regret is not being able to go outside of India by avoiding the plane (for political and security reasons) - even if we tried our best. Nevertheless, we want to show that it is possible to travel a lot, to discover a lot and to explore a lot while traveling by land, with as less waste and pollution as possible.

Therefore our traces will be made in the folds of the society: indeed we would like to visit friends (feel also free to join us here or there during our trip!) and meet new people, spend time with them,  so as to share anecdotes, ideas, narratives, songs, knowledges and experiences. Insides views, memories, sharing and exchanges - indelebile traces of a passage: it is the story we hope to write.

 

Way

Ephemeral events, but also continuity. With our little steps, we will have to make our way on the surface of the planet. We will have to go beyond the tendency of human beings to fragment the territory, by crossing borders and applying for visas. It was not easy to plan and it won't be easy to achieve. But still, we hope somehow to rediscover the magic of the landscape passing before our eyes.

We are indeed looking for a visible link between here and home, and also between the past and the future. That is why taking the plane to come back to Europe seemed incongruous to us: a flight would have been like a coma in the space and in the time. But now, we have the feeling that places will be connected to each other, just because we will concretely move from one to another. Therefore we are expecting a new perception of space, which traveling by land is in position to give us.

In this way our project's purpose is to respect the distance. Indeed we would to honor the 13 000 km we want to travel: with this experience of space by taking time to see the different transformation of the landscape and of the people, we want to construct a personal and living connection between east and west.

 

Journey

We also gave meaning to our trip, so that it has become a personal journey. By taking our time, by finding our way, by experiencing the distance in its authenticity, by observing the landscape changing, we want to "come back home". Therefore we see our trip as a kind of pilgrimage which will bring us back to ourselves. We want to draw our own Ariadne's thread in the world's labyrinth!
 
The paradox is that the base of the continuity is coming from transit and movement - it is actually poetics of journey. That is why the ephemeral aspect is so important: it implies transitions, evolutions and transformations. Indeed the identity of ourselves and the identity of the world are not fixed - they are never fixed. We are all together changing all the time, we are made out of vata, pitta and kapha. 

We sincerely and ardently hope that our way of transience will make sense to you as it makes sense to us!

A quick summary of the text for the ones who are more the visual type =) 

Somewhere in the world, there is India.

Somewhere in India, there is Tamil Nadu.

Somewhere in Tamil Nadu, there is Auroville.

And somewhere in Auroville ... there is us, Hannah & Julie !

We both arrived here in august 2016 and in september 2016 for a long term volunteering.

We met each other, we became good friends and we had a lot of different experiences in Auroville and outside - traveling through India. We finally decided to embark on a crazy adventure for the end of our journey.

Hannah

Hannah is a german student in International Social Work. She works for the organization Auroville Village Action Group since last august, first for her internship and then as volunteer taking a semester off: indeed she really liked India and wanted to stay more! She likes turtles, drinking ginger lemon tea, practicing yoga, wearing sunglasses, climbing everywhere, traveling and taking care of people.

Julie

Julie is a french student of Eco-Philosophy in Paris. She came to India to take a year off, to get out of libraries and to put her hands in the soil... Therefore she is presently volunteering in AuroOrchard, an organic and regenerative farm in Auroville! She likes black coffee, planting trees and flowers, playing basketball, cutting hair, traveling and smiling a lot.

હ 

As women of 24 years and as friends,

we are very happy to share

our project of traveling together back to Europe!