It has been 103 days since Ali Kabir Khalili and his wife Azita Noori started from Mashhad, Iran and today they are sharing a room at a couchsurfer's place in Madurai. From clocking 12,000 kms on a bike across Iran and hitch-hiking through Srilanka for a fortnight to the 13-hour bus ride from Alappuzha to Madurai, they are grateful for the whirlwind of events. “We lost our luggage on the bus but with the help of local people and police, we found it. So far, so good,” says Khalili, who is out on a mission to visit 193 countries in the next eight years. “We have planned for that much time and are going to be on the road. We will not be returning to Iran till we finish all the countries.”
The couple are basically bikers united by their love for travel and now they are set out on a crazy world tour. “We believe that we can make the world a bit better through our travels. Our main mode of travel is going to be either public transport or hitch-hiking, so that we get to experience the local way of living in every country,” says Noori. “We are spreading and receiving love all the way and the idea of our trip is to shed the fear of future and enjoy the present. We are going to live one day at a time without any apprehensions about tomorrow,” says Noori.
It all started when the pair met another like-minded couple Sorena and Behnaz. “We are a group of five now and all of us are taking this world tour on different routes. We have planned to meet in Nepal later this year,” says Khalili, who has signed up for a two-month meditation course at Vipasana in Chennai. “For the next couple of months, we plan to roam the east, west and north of India. Bits and parts of our travel are planned while much of it depends on what life throws up or the situation we face.” “For instance, Madurai was never on our agenda until our host in Chennai recommended the city as 'the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu, where an outsider can experience the best of the local Tamil way of living.' That made us take a detour and we are glad we did,” adds Noori.
Quitting their corporate jobs, Khalili and Noori are now eating away from their savings. “We are not worried about money, as we have overcome all our insecurities. It was indeed a tough decision to leave behind all that we had, our country and belongings to become a nomad. But once we packed our needs in just two bags, now we feel that the entire world is ours. There are enough good people to share and care for us,” says Khalili. “When we told our friends about travelling in India, a lot of them advised us against hitch-hiking as it's unsafe here. When we wasted over five hours in Munnar trying to hitch a ride, we understood that people here are not familiar about it and it's not really a safety issue.”
The couple are lucky to have been hosted at various places throughout their journey. “Till now, we have never had to take a paid accommodation. Wherever we go, we live with the locals, eat their food, practice their religion and experience their philosophy of life. We want to break the boundaries and spread positive energy. During our stay in Chennai, we took part in a voluntary beach clean up event and it boosted positivity in us,” says Noori, who will be next visiting Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
To know more about their journey, visit www.abitbetter.world or their Facebook page www.facebook.com/abitbetter.world
