After years of solo adventures across Europe, New Zealand, and North America, Ruchi returns to India, navigating its landscapes and stories with intention, insight, and the support of a trusted local partner
Ruchi is the kind of traveller who moves through the world with quiet confidence.
Since she began solo travels in 2016, she has backpacked through Europe’s charming villages, explored New Zealand, and even driven from her home in the US to the eastern edge of Canada. She’s comfortable navigating the unfamiliar–choosing the slower road, striking up conversations with strangers, and letting places reveal themselves without hurry.
Yet when she began planning a journey through Bengal and the Northeast, she sensed that India would demand a different approach. Not because she lacked the experience, but because she wanted to travel through it with intention—deeper, safer, and with the kind of insight that only comes from people who understand the country from the inside.
“I’ve travelled alone for years,” she says, “but India is layered. You can’t treat it like any other destination. You want someone who knows the backstory of every turn.”
That search for depth and trust led her to Breakaway.
Before committing to a long journey across the Northeast, Ruchi decided she needed a test run. She had just returned from Ladakh, another solo trip arranged through a different agency, and felt that the experience hadn’t matched her expectations. “It wasn’t bad,” she clarifies, “it just wasn’t aligned with how I like to travel. And in India, you really want the right people by your side.”
On her way back, she stopped in Delhi for a week-long Breakaway experience to understand how the company worked, how grounded their network was, and whether she could trust them with a far more ambitious itinerary.
Very quickly, she noticed the difference.
“It was the attention to detail,” she says. “But more than that, it was the sense that someone was truly looking out for me. In India, that matters.”
The Delhi leg sealed her decision. She returned to the US, cleared her calendar, and began planning the big journey—a three-week trip across Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, and Nagaland.
Ruchi is no stranger to navigating the world alone. In Europe, New Zealand, and Canada, she often used public transportation, stayed in Airbnb accommodations, and made friends simply by being open about her journey. “When you’re travelling solo abroad,” she says, “telling people you’re on your own often invites connection.”
India, however, required a different social instinct. She found herself staying more guarded—careful about what she disclosed, mindful of the assumptions people might make, and alert to the subtleties in tone or body language.
“There were moments when I kept my head down, ate my meal, and stayed invisible,” she admits. “Not out of fear, but out of self-preservation. You don’t always know how people will read you.”
She also learned how people reacted differently when they realised she was travelling alone. Abroad, curiosity led to conversation; in India, it often led to confusion.
“Questions like ‘Where is your family?’ or ‘How are you travelling alone?’ came up a lot,” she laughs. “Sometimes I’d mention I live in the US, and suddenly everything made sense to them. It was like they needed a mental category to place me in.”
Despite these nuances, Ruchi never felt unsafe. Her drivers were professional, responsive, and respectful; Breakaway checked in constantly; and she trusted her own instincts. But she acknowledges that India demands a deeper reading of the room.
“Travel here is incredible,” she says, “but you’re always doing small calculations—who you engage with, how much you share, how you respond. It’s subtle, but it’s constant.”
Once she began her circuit through Bengal and the Northeast, the hesitations faded into something Ruchi recognises intimately: the feeling of being fully alive in a place she doesn’t yet know.
She moved from Kolkata to Murshidabad and Shantiniketan, then onwards to Shillong, Cherrapunji, Guwahati, Jorhat, Majuli, Bhimapur, and Kohima—each destination revealing something she wasn’t expecting.
The surprises often came from history.
In Assam, a visit to Sivasagar turned a fatigued morning into one of the most fulfilling days of her trip. She had woken up and was feeling drained, unsure if she wanted to spend the day visiting old Ahom sites. But the moment she stepped into the monument complex, everything shifted.
“I was stunned,” she recalls. “We grow up reading such a narrow version of our own history. To stand in front of structures like those… it makes you realise how much we don’t know.”
The same happened in Nagaland at Khonoma Village. “It looked like a simple itinerary item—heritage village, walk through, meet locals,” she says. “But nothing prepares you for the visual and cultural richness of the place. It was one of those ‘I’m so glad I came’ moments.”
These experiences, unexpected, intimate, and steeped in local stories, became the spine of her journey.
When asked what India could offer travellers like her—not as a company, but as a country—Ruchi pauses. “It’s a mindset,” she finally says. “Solo female travellers aren’t looking for special treatment. Just normalcy. The ability to move through spaces without triggering surprise, concern, or curiosity.”
What would change everything, she believes, is a simple shift: seeing women alone not as exceptions, but as part of the everyday. “That’s really it,” she says. “If people could stop assuming that a woman alone needs to be questioned or categorised, we’d all travel more freely.”
Her trip ended after nearly three weeks. It was long, layered, at times challenging, but profoundly rewarding. Ruchi returned with stories, photographs, and a compass pointing back to the Northeast.
But she also returned with something she did not expect: a renewed sense of comfort travelling in India. “I messaged Bindu the moment I got back,” she says with a smile. “I told her—okay, where are we going next?”
For a woman who has travelled the world alone, that may be the highest compliment of all—and a reminder that the right kind of support doesn’t diminish independence. It expands it.
I have curated travel for long enough to know this: most people don’t remember how many places they covered. They remember the one conversation that rearranged their thinking
After years of solo adventures across Europe, New Zealand, and North America, Ruchi returns to India, navigating its landscapes and stories with intention, insight, and the support of a trusted local partner
While shopping for that ‘perfect present’, have you ever wondered what it is that you would really like to gift parents and the elders in your family – what it is that, in some small measure, could return those beautiful memories, the care, the health and happiness that they have showered on you over the years?