An hour after I said goodbye to my friend in January after her three-week visit to Delhi, a sense of loneliness sunk in. Despite having been in Delhi for nearly three months, I knew very few people and rarely ventured into the city. My friend?s departure meant the return of lonely weekends and boring evenings. Unwilling to face such a scenario again, I took up a friend?s advice and joined Couch Surfing, a global network of more than 1.7 million people.
The basic premise of Couch Surfing (CS), as my friend had explained to me, is that the site (couchsurfing.org) connects travellers with locals who will let them ?surf? their couch, that is, host them for one or several nights in their home (though the sleeping surface is not necessarily a couch; it could be a mattress or, if the traveller is lucky, a real bed). No money is exchanged?it is strictly forbidden by the site-but both parties benefit from the cultural exchange. There is also no obligation for reciprocity?CS members contribute to and benefit from the project according to their needs and abilities, so a traveller can stay as a guest in Couch Surfers? homes without ever having hosted.
I, not needing a couch to surf, decided to take advantage of another exchange opportunity the site offers-simply meeting up with locals or travellers for a coffee or a drink. In Delhi, there are several hundred Couch Surfers, CSers, according to site lingo-who make themselves available for such an exchange, including many who also host overnight, and in actuality the definition of ?a coffee or a drink? is extended to lunch, dinner, sightseeing or travelling. All in all, there are 3,740 CSers and counting in Delhi and more than 26,000 in India.
Shortly after creating my CS profile, I began receiving messages from Delhiites and travellers about meeting up. So far, I have met about a dozen CSers some 20 times for coffee, dinner, movies, sightseeing and even travelling. Most have been Indians, but I joined a fellow American in visiting the Crafts Museum. I surfed my first (and so far only) couch in Agra and have open invitations in Rajasthan and UP. Through my encounters, I have attempted to drive a stick shift (and failed), learned how to judge whiskeys, tried paan and had a lot of great conversations.
Of course, meeting up with strangers from the Internet entails a certain risk, especially for foreign women like me. CS profiles are designed to provide information for other CSers to judge the potential risk involved in meeting, hosting or staying with that person. A profile includes references from CSers who have already met the person, a list of their friends on the site, information about whether the person?s identity or location has been checked (an optional measure requiring a small donation to the otherwise free site) and whether the person has been ?vouched? for, a process by which trusted members of the site certify that they trust the person. Communication between CSers is conducted through the site?s internal message system until the new acquaintances feel comfortable enough to exchange e-mail addresses or phone numbers.
While my experience on Couch Surfing has been overwhelmingly positive, I?ve come across a few bad apples. Being a foreign woman (and, worse yet, blonde) in a country where more than 80% of Couch Surfers are male (compared to a fairly even gender split in many Western countries), I have been the subject of inappropriate advances, including from men who weren?t single. However, according to CS statistics, 99.794% of all member experiences have been positive based on the more than 4.5 million references that have been left for CS members. While this figure is undoubtedly more generous than reality (perhaps users are uncomfortable leaving negative references), it does reflect an extremely high success rate for meet-ups and hosting experiences.
Still, I have had so many great experiences that I plan to continue being an active CSer even after I leave India next month. I have started using CS forums to plan a trip to Egypt and will meet CSers there (and maybe surf some couches) in order to make local friends and get an insider perspective of the country. If I return to the US this summer, I?ll use CS to share my hometown with visitors, to meet like-minded people and to discover things I don?t know about my city. And when I move to France in the fall, I?ll tap CS to help me get acquainted with and make friends in my new home. With Couch Surfers active in 236 countries, I am sure to find them wherever I go.