Why I Started Hiking?
People always ask me how I started hiking? How I started loving the outdoors? I’ve never truly shared the reason I started hiking but the love I had for the outdoors has always been there. As a little girl growing up in Gwalior(India), I was always outside and this is how every child is back home. The only time I was inside was for school, sleeping and eating meals. When I was done with those things I would run out of the house to play pakdam pakdai (Rat-A-Tat) and Jump rope with my friends. Because of my childhood, I’ve always loved the outdoors.
But how I got into hiking when I moved to the United States was for a totally different reason.
I came to US on dependent Visa with my husband and within few months i realized what culture shock feels like. I had no friends at that time, i used to feel lonely. My husband wanted to do his Masters from US so we started living student’s life here and our budget was really tight at that time. I wanted to explore America but it was simply too expensive for us. He was busy with his studies and i had no friends.
It was at this time that I started thinking about exploring the space I had access to which was the state of North Carolina. I looked for things to do that didn’t cost a lot and trips that can make me feel more independent and i really wanted to make friends as i was a new girl in town. For me hiking in the wilderness met all of these requirements.
Also this platform helped me in meeting new people and i gained knowledge from people around the globe, all thanks to that one decision i made that is to start going for hiking.
When i went for solo hiking for the first time in 2015 i used google maps. I read reviews on google maps to get the idea about the place. Since then I have gained so much through this community so i decided to volunteer as a google local guide in 2017 and started sharing my reviews on maps after coming back from my hiking adventures .
Now I always encourage my family and friends to come out of their stressful work sometimes and feel the beauty of nature and meet new people. Local guide is a platform where I feel I can share my experiences with the world and encourage millions of people across the world to come out and see how beautiful our world is.
