Are you feeling stressed out, lost interest in your job and wanting to take a break? Or you don’t have a job yet and are unsure about the future? Can you describe how your life is in crisis? If you’re between 21 and 28 and seriously consider travel as an option to get completely out of everything that you’re currently hinged on to, AWOL (Away Without Leave) might sound surprisingly sweet to you. AWOL will sponsor your travel for three months and the only condition is that you need to be serious about it. “We will provide you Rs 1,000 every week and you should take care of yourself, including food and lodging, within that budget while travelling,” says Smriti Ahuja, who is busy in the process of sending the first batch of 24 Awolers by October this year. Smriti, along with Keith Menon, came up with the idea of AWOL last year and created a community page, AWOL, on facebook which has got more than 1,500 members now. “We keep getting queries and at least three people join our community everyday,” says Smriti. AWOL is actually a military term to describe a soldier who has left his or her post without permission. And Keith and Smriti have adapted the term to suit what many youngsters are going through ‘quarter-life crisis’. “All you have to do is to write to us how you feel and why you want to take up this trip. If you convinve us, we’ll keep in stay with you to get more details and finally we’ll meet you,” says Smriti. So, what should one do during the trip? “There are no clear details about what you should do. You can do anything you want, but you should update us on how you have spend your day and the money you received. All of them will be posted on our website,” says Keith. “Each Awoler will be provided with a laptop with internet, digi or video camera.” But from where this idea took birth? “We have found ourselves in such a crisis before and travelling made a huge difference. There are many youngsters in such situation and we thought, ‘why not we give them a chance too?’,” says Keith. “There is very little Indian online content and it’ll be a platform for them to contribute towards it.”Keith makes it clear that they don’t promise participants that their life would be different after the trip. “Who knows, it might become even more worse. Your intention should only be to check how hard you can push yourself to. It’s not like taking a break from work or going on a holiday trip,” he explains.Apart from sorting out the genuinely interested participants, both Keith and Smriti are currently working on getting sponsors for the trip. “We’re looking for sponsors who are interested in the idea and not looking for promotion of their products. We’re in the process of meeting them,” says Keith. Both of them are based in Mumbai and have been friends since college. AWOL brought them together from their different professions. They have restricted the number of Awolers to 24 to make it easy for them to monitor the participants. “If there’re many people, we can’t track them. And the website will be flooded with content which won’t serve the purpose,” says Keith. They also have many other plans lined up but don’t want to talk about it until the first batch of Awolers set off on their expeditions. But one thing they’re very sure about is “to build AWOL as a property.” For details, visit http://www.facebook.com/groups/awaywithoutleave
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