The Courage to Say “Let’s See”

I have always had a certain kind of confidence. Not the loud I know exactly how this will go kind. I have never once known how anything will go. It’s quieter than that. It’s being completely unsure how things will turn out, and still feeling that however bad it gets, I’ll handle it.

Put another way, it’s the courage to say let’s see. Pathukalam. Four years of my life can be summarized in those two words, and honestly so can most of my financial decisions.

I don’t know where I picked this up as a kid. But it has been my go-to thought for every major decision I’ve made, for better and, as you’ll see, occasionally for much worse.

One morning in 2017

That’s how Hygge Journeys started.

One day I woke up and decided I was going to start a trekking and camping company. Why? Because I had done a basic mountaineering course. 😂 What else did I know? Nothing. Nada. I had the qualifications of a man who had once successfully walked up a hill.

If I look back at that decision now, I want to grab that 21-year-old by the shoulders and ask what on earth he was thinking. And yet, what a journey it was. Four years, 2017 to 2021, of pure roller coaster.

The name was the one thing I was sure about. Hygge is a Danish word for living with the simple pleasures of life and actually enjoying them. I wanted every trekker who came with us to feel exactly that. The business plan, on the other hand, was one Danish word and a prayer.

The seed money was a ₹2 lakh gold loan against my mom’s gold. I will be forever grateful to my parents for letting me make whatever mess I was going to make, and for letting me figure things out on my own. I gave the gold back to her in 2023, six years late, which I like to think of as a “flexible repayment schedule.” In between, I barely survived those four years on a salary of ₹5,000 a month.

But I was never alone in it. Hemachandra and Vimal joined me early on, and friends, cousins and good people were always around. They made it so much fun, even while I ran about like a headless chicken with no idea what I was doing. Honestly, a headless chicken is a pretty accurate org chart for Hygge Journeys circa 2017.

What no classroom teaches

Somewhere in that chaos I learned how to figure out solutions, how to run social media ads, how to talk to people, how to make cold calls, how to close a sale, how to lead a trek. I don’t think I would have taken that much out of an MBA. I definitely wouldn’t have gotten a forest fire, a flood and a pandemic thrown in as bonus case studies.

I also learned how to take responsibility, what ethics really mean, and how to handle it when things go wrong. Because when you have no experience and you’re doing everything by trial and error, things go wrong every other time. Mostly the trial. Occasionally the error won.

The best education one can ever receive is only through travel.

When the universe kept knocking

It sometimes felt like the universe was trying very hard to hint that this wasn’t for me, and being extremely unsubtle about it.

Just getting started took three months before we finally set off on our first trek, to Tadiandamol. On my third trip, while I was up there, I heard about the terrible forest fire at Kurangani, where 18 people lost their lives. The government banned trekking until further notice.

When treks resumed and things slowly began to pick up, something lovely happened. The newspapers noticed us. We had tied up with the Tanglish stand-up comedy club, so comedians now performed around our campfires, and that quirky little idea made it into print. Turns out putting stand-up comedians in a forest at night is either genius marketing or a horror movie setup, and it went well enough that I’m calling it genius.

Chennai Times (TOI): “Do you hygge when you travel?”

DT Next, 5 June 2018: “Trekking with a twist.”

Then the Kerala floods of 2018 brought everything to a full stop, right in the middle of the monsoon, with floods and landslides everywhere. The universe, still knocking. Loudly. With a battering ram.

Slowly we recovered, and 2019 turned out to be the best year of all. We ran lots of trips, and we signed an exclusive one-year deal with Decathlon to run treks with them. I ended 2019 on a high, super confident, absolutely certain I had this whole “running a business” thing figured out.

And then life sent COVID. Lockdown. Work from home. The universe’s timing has always been impeccable.

The year I let it go

COVID ended. A couple of years went by, and suddenly everything felt different. The trekking boom did arrive, a little later, fashionably, after everyone else had already left the party. But I had someone special in my life now, and responsibilities looked different. It had been four years since I took that gold from my mom, and I was scared to walk back into that life again.

I guess life was asking more of me. Or maybe, for once, I actually listened to the universe saying I have something better for you, instead of pretending I couldn’t hear it over the sound of my own stubbornness. One day, just like that, I woke up and decided it was time to let it go.

The kindest thing I took away

I’m grateful for every person I met in those years. They took care of that 21-year-old kid who was running around trying to do something he loved.

I have hosted more than a thousand people. I know, one hundred percent, that there were a lot of screw-ups. And yet every single one of them was kind to me. When things weren’t up to the mark, they told me gently. They never ridiculed me, even when I messed up, even when the trip didn’t go according to plan, and I gave them plenty of material to work with.

Some of them were generous enough to put it in writing. Here are a few words I still go back to.

“Though I didn’t know anybody initially, at the end of the trek I had a good set of friends.”

Methunprashanth, after Kolukkumalai

“I have no prior experience in trekking. I tried my first experience with Hygge Journeys. To be honest, they made this a best moment of my life.”

Raja Singh, after Gandikota

“Thanks to yogesh and the team for making the trip a memorable one and not just a ‘trip’.”

Sindhuja

“Everything was very well managed… a lifetime experience… the coordinator was very supportive!”

Madhuri, on Facebook

On Google we hold 4.8 stars from 70 reviews, and 96% of the 31 people who reviewed us on Facebook recommend Hygge Journeys. I read those numbers and think of every gentle word behind them, and quietly wonder what the other 4% said.

Maybe because of all of them, I try to be nicer when I see someone trying something on their own, someone passionate about what they’re doing. Over the years, a lot of people gave me that space. I’d like to hand it on.

Would I do it again?

As I look back, it is ridiculous to jump into starting a company without knowing anything.

I still wouldn’t think twice about doing the same. Pathukalam.

— Yoki