How I got here
I always wanted to travel. Tried for Europe in 2015. Visa rejected. Then life happened: money problems, the usual. In 2019 I finally landed a remote job, and that one thing, location freedom, cracked everything open. First stop Sri Lanka, then straight into South East Asia, and I never really stopped.
I travel overland by choice. Fewer flights, lighter footprint, and honestly a completely different film of the country: you see how people actually live, and you learn to solve problems on the fly. Bus leaves you at a border because your visa-on-arrival took too long? (Yes, Singapore→Malaysia, that was me.) You figure it out. You live, you travel, you learn. By the time COVID hit, with all its tests and forms and rules, travel didn't scare me anymore. I'd already seen every way a trip can go wrong.
Why I run these trips
Here's the gap I kept seeing in the Indian travel scene: so many people have the money, and now, with remote work, the time and freedom too. But they're scared to go alone. So they plan with friends who don't share the itch, and the trip dies in the group chat. Months of planning. Sometimes years. Never happens.
Bananarchy is for the people who actually show up. Passionate travellers held back by family, by society, by being an introvert, or by simple fear of the unknown. I've run group trips before, and there is nothing like watching someone see the world crack open in front of them for the first time. That feeling is the whole reason I started this.
And I'm going deep, not wide. Bananarchy runs only the Banana Pancake Trail: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia. No other destinations, ever. Nobody in India is running a single backpacking-style trip across all four. We are.
What I actually know
I've lost count of how many times I've been to Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Months in each: three, four months in Cambodia alone, similar in Thailand and Vietnam, a bit less in Laos. Long enough to stop being a tourist. I know the hidden corners, the specific bars where the night turns into a story, the small places where these countries quietly make you fall in love with them. On this trip, I take you exactly to those.
A story about things going wrong
Cancún, Mexico. Coming back from Chichén Itzá, someone lifts my phone on the bus. I get off, borrow a stranger's phone, call the police. They show up, "help" me. And rob me. Money, power bank, AirPods, the lot. I only realise once they've dropped me at my hostel. And because my phone was gone, I couldn't get the OTP to unlock my cards. Stuck in a foreign city, no phone, no cash, police are the mafia. I sold some gear to eat for a few days until I got a new SIM, a new phone, and my cards back.
Every one of those disasters taught me something you can't learn from a blog. That's exactly what I take the trouble off your plate for, so you get the adventure and the confidence, without the part where you're selling your headphones to buy dinner.
Why go with me, not alone
Go with me and you skip all the research, all the logistics, and every hard lesson I already learned the hard way. You get a safe space to just enjoy the trip, while quietly learning how to do it all yourself. Because that's the real graduation: by the end, you can pack a bag, book your own flights, sort your own visa, and go anywhere on earth alone. No more tours. No more agents. No more paying for things you never needed.
