> Hope you are doing fine… At the outset, I am V Kumara Swamy, a journalist
> with The Telegraph, Calcutta, India… I am doing a story on the concept of
> couch surfing and your friend Thomas Goorden recommended your name while
> responding to my queries on the same. He said that since you are a fairly
> frequent couchsurfer with some experience of India, you would be of great
> help to me.
> I thought an interaction with you would add immense value to my article.
> I would be extremely grateful if you could take some time out and answer my
> queries..
Hi Kumara,
Ok. Great!
>
> 1) Please tell me a little bit about the journey of your couch surfing.org..
> How did you start..and which are the countries you have visited so far? How
> many times have you come to India?
I have started using another website for hospitality exchange in April 2004. Since then I’ve traveled extensively, mostly by means of hitchhiking and staying with local people - in Europe, South America,
the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South East Asia, China and currently the Middle East.
I have traveled in India once, but that was in 2001, before online hospitality exchange was widely spread. I had a completely different traveling experience, it was my first time out of Europe, so I was very unexperienced. I spent 9 weeks in India though and I had contact with the local population, but I exclusively stayed in guest houses. However, I spent 2 weeks in Udaipur to learn sitar and the teaching space was inside the teacher’s home - so I had food there and was even invited for a Hindu marriage ceremony.
> world is it more popular?
> people from around the world and how many times have you couchsurfed
> yourself??
> couchsurfing is like a boon? Are more and more people taking advantage of
> this concept?
For the short periods of time that I have had a more sedentary lifestyle - renting an apartment and working a day job - my guests were free to use anything they could find in my fridge (which is usually chockfull).
> made you really feel good?
The trucker who took me to Istanbul from the Turkish border helped me find my way in the city, when he left other random strangers continued helping me find my way and (since I hadn’t acquired any Turkish money
yet) pay my bus tickets right up to the front door of a friend with whom I was going to stay. He was not home and his Kurdish neighbors who barely spoke English invited me to wait in their home, offered me
food, and I fell asleep on their couch and I woke up there the next morning. Muslim hospitality can be overwhelming.
> all have been in India, and tell me a bit about your hosts and the
> experiences. It would be really great if you could recount one interesting
> couchsurfing experience in India.
Unfortunately I don’t have any experiences as a couchsurfer in India. I am looking forward to go back to India some day though. And though I’ve successfully hitchhiked almost anywhere I am a bit worried about
the possibilities of hitchhiking in India.
I hold an MSc in mathematics and work as an internet consultant (here and there, now and then), but most of my online time goes into non-profit wikis and other forms of social use of the internet (though I recently started two wikis with which I want to make some money: visawiki.org and cashwiki.org). The internet offers new modes of sharing, both online and in real life. CouchSurfing is one way. (I’ve volunteered for the couchsurfing organization for 9 months, but I’m not very happy with the direction chosen by the couchsurfing leadership.) I think we will see much more of this in the coming years, online systems for coordination that allow people to live their lives in more pleasant ways (check e.g. groundcrew.us). Besides that I love learning languages and the restriction of only 10 languages on couchsurfing profiles is a bit annoying 
> have a very short deadline….
Ok. Good luck!
namaste,
Kasper
hoboceleb