As the vice president of a multinational company, Dhruv North was successful in his career, had a fulfilling personal life, and was supposedly living the conventional dream. But he was not happy. No amount of luxury vacations or imported cars were bringing him any joy. That was in 2015.
Almost 900 km and seven years later, in Ahmedabad in 2022, Aditya Banker had a similar situation. He owned two multi-specialty hospitals, but decided it was time to call it quits. So, he left it all at the age of 43.
North and Banker are now living, touring, and travelling across the country in campervans. And their lives did a 180°.
While the campervan culture has been pretty common in Western countries, this wasn’t the case in India for the longest time. In a culture that believes in stability over everything else, the concept of motorhomes sounded like something that was only apt for the ‘hippies’.
However, that is now changing. And fast. For the past few years, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, the campervan trend has picked up in India — giving way to people to travel full or part time, wherever they want, whenever they want.
North, for instance, loved the outdoor lifestyle, and had seriously started camping about a decade ago. For him, the meaning of freedom and happiness was one and the same — travelling.
What started out for North as trekking soon turned into converting his seven-seater vehicle into a camping car. Years down the line, he alternates between living with his family in a caravan part time, and living in the city for work part time.
Banker has a similar story. “I have been camping in my car and on my bike for very long. Some years ago, I even set up a small kitchen in my Ford Endeavour and travelled throughout India with my wife. I got a campervan two years ago, and now I spend half of the year travelling, and half in my hometown,” he says.
Having travelled across the length and breadth of the country, and just having returned from a 40-day trip to the northeast, Banker says, “I have not had a single bad experience while touring. When you’re away from the 9-5 life in nature, everything about your world becomes relaxing.”
Learning on the go
What Banker says about zero bad experiences might seem like a brag, but it is far from one. Most campers emphasise what a learning experience it has been to live in a motorhome.
Vivek Sharma, a documentary filmmaker from Ajmer who runs a channel called Caravan Bharat on YouTube and Instagram, says his first overlanding experience was a 10-day trip to Badrinath amid Covid-19. But the journey was such that it inspired him to overhaul his lifestyle. Now, he travels part time in a caravan with his family of four. Till a year ago, his mother would travel in the campervan too, which he had customised with a functional kitchen, washroom, washing machine, water storage, sleeping area, and more.
During their trips, while Sharma’s 11-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son are being homeschooled by his wife and him, he feels their real education has been the journey itself. Says Sharma, “While travelling, whenever we live in villages, it gives us a chance to learn about the local cultures. The learning is so much beyond books. We get to hear inspiring stories. For my kids, the road has broadened their view of life and taught them skills that they wouldn’t have learnt in the comfort of a home. They have been brought up in a world without stress and panic.”
In remote areas, the locals and villagers often also go above and beyond to help out any travellers. Dr Rajendra Dhande, a 48-year-old Pune-based gynaecologist, shares that during his last trip to Arunachal Pradesh, he got stuck for around eight days due to bad weather but the locals hosted him, welcomed him into their homes, and treated him like a family member.
Banker, too, says that he cannot count how many times locals have helped him figure out where to park, where to find electricity for the solar panel in his caravan, where to fill up the water storage tank, or where he could use a washroom. Petrol pump employees, too, he says, have helped him everywhere during his travels.
The biggest learning, though, all of them say, has been the value of discipline. When you’re in the middle of nowhere, you need to have discipline and skills that will help you survive.
In fact, it was this discipline and passion that the campervan instilled in him that made North design his first caravan and then build a company out of it.
Business on wheels
In 2015, North quit his job to do something of his own and started a cyber security company. Around the same time, he started modifying his Bajaj Tempo Matador. It took so much of his time and energy that he had to take a sabbatical from work.
Says North, “My van was an old, beat-up one. It gave me a lot of challenges and insights into how these vehicles work. I realised that in India, there was no fabricator making only caravans. They were majorly working on vanity vans, and caravans were just a small part of their business. Since those who were building weren’t spending any time in the van, a lot of the features they were coming up with weren’t actually usable. The caravans weren’t built with Indian roads and weather in mind.”
This was when North started Pro Camper India, and set up two factories to build and modify caravans in Ahmedabad and Noida. Now having been in business for a year, North says that he was able to bring in his own experience as a consumer to upgrade caravans.
However, building a caravan is not a child’s play. Sachin Singh Bhadoriya, CEO of Valuable Wheels India, who is a Greater Noida-based fabricator, says that people charge (and are willing to pay) crores of rupees for caravans. “If you want to modify, say a Maruti Eeco, only with the essentials like a small kitchen, a bed, a spot for electricity, it would cost you anywhere from Rs 7-9 lakh. And if you want a luxury interior to your van, the starting prices would be around Rs 35-40 lakh. There is no upper limit to how much you can customise your vehicle. The only point to note is that you cannot make structural changes to the vehicle, you can only customise the interiors,” says Bhadoriya.
Naturally, those on the business end are laughing all the way to the bank. The demand for campervans has risen substantially after Covid-19. Bhadoriya says he caters to 40-50 customers annually and on a daily basis, 60% of the calls he receives are queries about modifying RVs.
It also helps when states offer subsidies for motorhomes. For instance, in November 2023, the Goa government announced that it’ll set up a fund to provide subsidies up to Rs 20 lakh to create infrastructure for caravan parks. Prior to this, in 2022, Kerala inaugurated its first caravan park in the hill station Vagamon. Not just that, in 2021, the Maharashtra government, too, had approved policies to allow private players to establish caravan parks “on private or government land in buffer zones”. The Gujarat government has also set up an application for a “capital subsidy for purchase of caravan or campervan”.
Roadblocks are many
But it’s not all rosy. Sharma says that getting a motorhome registered is still a pretty grey area in the country. Every state has different rules and guidelines for the registration, which often leaves their owners in a lurch. It took him two years to get his campervan registered.
North agrees. He points out that even the modifications you make to your vehicle need to be approved by the Regional Transport Office (RTO), where sometimes officials are not aware about the rules themselves. “In the absence of regulations, you often have to rely on a fabricator to modify your vehicle, which is not cheap. Everyone who is DIY-ing their motorhomes is taking a risk,” says North.
The challenges don’t end here. Many of the policies implemented for campervans are those that apply to commercial vehicles too, which pose troubles. For instance, says North, “You can’t make a caravan class change to a vehicle after three years.”
This lack of standardised guidelines leads to confusion for not just consumers but fabricators too. Bhadoriya says that fabricators like him are not aware of what the limitations are when it comes to modifying vehicles, and when or where they need to put the brakes on it. And even though the essence of living or travelling in a motorhome comes from its spontaneity, in India, it’s not possible to a large extent. Travellers say that since there are not many accessible campervan parking areas, you always have to be careful about where you’re going, especially if you’re travelling with your family.
There are also certain limitations that come with an RV. You can’t freely move around in cities and you can’t take them everywhere. Sharma also says that there are no guidelines or places where campers can dispose of the grey and black wastewater generated in their RVs.
“We have found a way around it, but it’s not a great long-term plan. We use chemical toilets that make our waste odourless and compostable, so we dispose of it in the barren stretches between villages or towns,” Sharma says.
Another problem area for RV travellers is electricity. You need electricity to run the appliances in your motorhomes, to switch on the lights, and to keep the fans running. While most people rely on solar panels, not everyone can afford the cost that they come at. Bhadoriya says that installing a solar panel can cost anywhere between Rs 70,000 and Rs 2-3 lakh. At the same time, external grids for electricity are not widely available.
However, Sharma does believe that till the time the campervan life becomes normal in India and the opportunities to explore and live amid unpredictabilities become commonplace, people like him are the only privileged few getting to “experience Athithi Devo Bhava in real life every time they visit remote villages and are earning the love and affection of locals”.
Still a bumpy ride
Big bucks
- Modifying a 4-wheeler with essentials like kitchen, washroom, electricity panel, bunk beds, etc, can cost Rs 7-9 lakh
- For luxury customisations, starting rates could be Rs 35-40 lakh
Not so routine
- Living a routine life in an RV is an acquired skill. Van is like an empty canvas where you build everything from ground up
- People who live in RVs full time usually opt for solar panels to generate electricity
- For water storage, you have to build containers inside car itself
- Disposing of waste is another challenge. As of now, India doesn’t have any dedicated areas where you can throw grey or black water
Parking woes
- In absence of dedicated parks, campers resort to parking RVs either at petrol pumps, or request locals to help them find spots
Worth the hassle
- Level of comfort might not always be up to mark, but caravaners say experiences are such they trump it all
- Plus, it teaches you discipline and using everything efficiently, be it water, power or fuel
Can’t own? Hire one
- Carvaa: Started by four friends from Delhi, the company not only offers caravans on rent, but also specialises in modifying motorhomes
- Camping Co: This Guwahati-based start-up promotes ‘responsible rural tourism and adventures’, offers campervans for hire in northeast India, Bhutan
- Travel homes: The Ahmedabad-based company buys, sells and gives caravans on rent; also offers campsite equipment if you want to build one yourself
- Motorhome Hire India: The company, operating from Delhi, offers luxury motorhomes in three different setups— 6-, 8- and 12-seater vans
- Motohom: Based out of Mumbai, the company offers RVs on rent for travelling, for film shoots, and even for corporate needs
- Motorhome Adventures: Started by a mixed-culture couple from India and Nepal, the company offers caravans for hire, also works on conversion/building of new chassis