Travellers Of The Month – Dirk & Lieve De Witte

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March 29th, 2016 by Abhijit Chakraborty

This is the story of two people who redefine passion in travel, two people who have covered the world in their Toyota car, two people whose story could make any traveller envious.

Meet Dirk and Lieve De Witte. They are from Texas, the city where the Rio Grande flows wide and mighty. They have a unique hobby – world travel. The De Wittes tend to travel around the world every six months and their recent travels have brought them to the Kochi. They entered India via Nepal and their plan is to cover the country by road. Their Indian sojourn has taken them through UP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Their travels started back in 2008. While they have stories of their 5-star stays in Bangladesh and 7-star stays in Brunei, Dirk and Leive plan to stick to budget hotels as much as they can. Their trips are normally on tight budgets and they understand the importance of sticking to it.

Here is the path they have managed to chart so far –

Map

This time, they decided to explore India inside out. Referred to by a friend in Mumbai, the De Witte’s came to know about OYO Rooms and the wide presence it has on Indian soil. Once they tried and used the service, there was no looking back. Right from the user-friendliness of the app to the convenience of round the clock customer service and the standardization of the rooms, they are now fans of the OYO experience.

Our customer experience team caught up with them in Kochi where they checked into OYO Rooms MG Road, and had an interesting conversation.

Q. For how long have you been travelling?
A. Our initial plan was to travel 7 months from Texas, USA to Ushuaia, Argentina – the Southernmost town in the world. This was in October 2008. But we changed that plan. We now travel 6 months and fly back home. Six months later we continue our travels.

Q. What inspires you to travel?
A. We started traveling when I retired at 66. After an active professional life we wanted to continue a kind of life with lots of challenges, maybe I was afraid to fall into a black hole. In the past, we had been traveling a lot throughout the world but for short periods. Travelling is tasting the world.

Q. How do you plan for long trips such as India?
A. India was on the list of countries we wanted to visit. The first attempt to enter India on our way to South East Asia was not successful. In 2011, we got no permission to cross Pakistan. The only solution was to travel through China. But China requires foreigners to have a local guide inside the vehicle and our Toyota has no spare seat! We had to find other fellow travelers to travel into China. It was December 2014 when we entered India coming from Myanmar. In the meantime, we had learned not to have rigid travel plans because so many things can happen and you may encounter lots of unknown situations. We have time, why should we rush? India is a big country and at the start, we knew little of it. Only the things you can read and hear. In 2009, we came to Bengaluru for a wedding and discovered a bit of the culture of that part of the country during a 2 weeks round trip. The plan was to discover the most of the country from east to west and from north to south.

Dirk & Lieve next to their beloved Toyota FJ Cruiser

Q. Tell us more about what made OYO your choice of stay. Can you share your OYO story?
A. On top of our 4×4 we have a tent. And if we can we try to camp. But India is not a real camping land so we had to look for affordable and comfortable sleeping places. By accident, we discovered OYO Rooms beginning this year on our way from Nepal to Kerala. We found the prices and the quality of the offered rooms attractive but also the way of booking a room. Since we try to stay as free as we can we try to book as late as we can, just before we reach our destination. Booking over the internet is easy and fast. And OYO has a good functioning booking system that allows us to book that way. When using the OYO App we can sort out in which area the OYO rooms are situated. That are the main reasons why we stayed at OYO so many times.

Q. What’s your favourite location in India?
A. The most difficult question! We have been in so many different places and a State as Nagaland or West Bengal is so different from Sikkim or Kashmir Ladakh or Rajasthan. We love mountains and Kerala have some, maybe that is one reason why we like it. But travelling is not only seeing places or heritage buildings it’s also being able to chat with people and learn more about them.