Dharamkot: Ullas Marar, 41, travels slowly, but efficiently. In the past year and a half, he’s meandered through Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bulgaria, Goa — and is now in Dharamshala. The option to stop no longer exists. He’s a digital nomad.
He is part of a growing tribe of young working professionals not seeking nirvana but work-bliss balance. They’re not travelling for discovery, dislocation, disruption, or decadence, but as a way of life—all the while ensuring their corporate jobs and cheques are intact. Amazon delivers their groceries, Myntra and Nykaa their international hair products. They leave the city, but not the benefits that city life offers. They leave office politics, not the pay.
The city is no longer aspirational. Freedom is. Women, though, haven’t been able to capitalise on the remote work boom in the same way. Indian digital nomads are rarely female. Safety, or the lack thereof, looms large.
Dharamshala, Goa, Puducherry, and Bir are among the top digital nomad hotspots in India shaping the future of work. Cities that are Instagram-friendly are favourites. Goa, much like governments across the world, wants to rewrite policies to woo digital nomads to their regions.
“I have meetings in Bolivia and Qatar next month, but I don’t know where I’m going to be in between,” Marar said casually. He might go to Chiang Mai. The day he received his offer letter to head the International Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Entrepreneurship, he informed his landlord he was leaving the big bad city of Delhi. He gave up his apartment, sold the majority of his possessions, and moved lock, stock, and barrel to nowhere.
“Nobody should be living in big Indian cities. It’s subhuman. You realise this contrast when you travel,” he said.
Digital nomads are big on fostering community—and the virtues of high-speed internet. Other than the rise of co-working and co-living infrastructure, it’s also led to the stirring of an ideological, almost cult-like movement based on a version of a future that’s inextricable from technology but has the benefits of pastoral life and can earn you climate brownie points. A healthy gut and good conversation.
Earlier, those staying for extended periods in Dharamshala were artists, writers, and photographers. Now, the demographic has been altered; its scope widened to pave the way for a fleet of software engineers, consultants, and start-up founders and workers. It’s playing out in Goa and Puducherry as well.
“I look at digital nomads as a mindset,” said Mayur Sontakke, 39, founder and CEO of NomadGao, a co-living space which hosts remote workers from India and abroad.
We want people going back to their roots, living in smaller communities, more sustainably and responsibly — but with the power of tech.
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Slack, WhatsApp, emails
In the early hours of the morning, Marar nurses his cup of coffee outside his room, gazing at the point where the snow-capped mountains fuse with the sky. This is his morning routine in Dharamkot—before his phone starts ringing.
But there are limitations to this opening-up of hilly towns and their new arrivals. There’s nothing organic about it. It’s skill-driven. Ordinary interactions are edged with networking. In NomadGao, conversations often hinge around one question: “What do you do?”
Digital nomads aren’t immune to the long hours and compulsory deliverables that shape corporate life. Their days are marked by Slack beeps, WhatsApp messages, and Zoom meetings. The nomads are as tuned in, as savvy to the demands of a high-paying stressful job. But the privilege of not having to sit under antiseptic white light, glued to a desktop computer on its last legs is their governing force.
There’s a stack of books on the countertop of Nook, a vegan-friendly cafe above NomadGao. The Psychology of Money, Think and Grow Rich, Get Your Shit Together, and ReWork are some of the titles. This stream of self-help is given a cushion in the form of a Stieg Larson thriller.
If ‘eat, pray, love’ had a career avatar, it would look like a digital nomad. And that all-important 21st-century word ‘vibe’ is used to gatekeep the authentic ones.
“We’ve said no to people based on their vibe,” said Sontakke founder of NomadGao. At the entrance, located amid the verdant green of Dharamkot, is a manifesto. “It’s a social club…as long as you [aspiring members of the community] meet certain parameters,” he added. They can’t party too much and need to have a barterable skill that can bolster the community.
What unites nomads other than their shared life philosophy is often a kitchen — or a meal prepared, cooked, and eaten communally. A kitchen is one of Marar’s nomad non-negotiables. On a Saturday evening, people at NomadGao gather ingredients — running to and fro for their piece de resistance, a chicken curry.
“When I was in Dharamkot during the height of the pandemic, there were about 200-250 nomads,” said Riyam, the founder of a Dharamshala-based start-up which builds chest-binders. “We were eating together, cooking together. It was a real sense of camaraderie.”
The patronising desire to ‘give back’ to the local people and a devotional commitment to the community is encouraged.
“I’m not a ‘stay for a week’ kind of traveller,” said Sid, who works for a global payments company. Originally from Chandigarh, he’s shifting base to Georgia, which is where his company is headquartered. “I bring my friends [from Eastern European countries] to Chandigarh for all the weddings in my family. They only know Indian stereotypes.”
Sid begins his workday with a mediation session. Even when he’s on a hike or taking easy walks, he claims to be logged in — taking calls and attending to Slack messages.
At a local cafe, Trek and Dine, dreadlocked foreigners lounge about, some of them smoking joints, some working on their laptops, and others staring vacantly at the mountains in the distance. Three employees of a non-profit ed-tech company discuss the importance of data and tech literacy.
Pritam, the company’s tech head, identifies as a former digital nomad. Before settling down in Dharamkot and spending the pandemic in Bengaluru, he travelled for four years. He’s not sure how many countries he’s visited.
“It was 24 the last time I counted.”
He isn’t trying to find himself. He was just out to catch the best reception.
“We’re quite privileged,” he said, referring to the digital nomad community. “And we’re not exactly adventuring into the unknown. We’re going wherever there’s fast internet, friendly people, and cafes. There’s nothing we give up.” Amazon delivers to his doorstep wherever he goes.
But to live this life, digital nomads have to shed the trappings of a fixed address and security. The rooms at NomadGao, 14 in Goa and 12 in Dharamkot, hinge on functionality. They’re minimally decorated and are devoid of personality; paintings look eerie like Rorschach inkblot. Guests need to stay for a minimum of three days. Over 50 per cent stay for over a month. A desk is key — Marar, for one, spends most of his day in his room, where he takes his work calls.
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Catalyst of the trend
The catalyst of this perfect confluence is, of course, tech infrastructure. This union of like-minded people occurs over WhatsApp. On the NomadGao group, new inductees are instructed to provide a brief intro of themselves and the projects they’re currently working on.
“From documenting my travels on Instagram, I built my community. Then, I turned it into an email list and began reaching out to people,” said Divyaksh Schae, founder of what he described as India’s first digital nomad village, huddled in the mountains of South India.
It’s his 150-acre family home, and he wants to ensure exclusivity — and so, he rarely discloses its exact location. It’s a culmination; the fusion of his digital and physical worlds. “I reached out to my digital community, but I don’t want to open the floodgates. I want to keep the vibe positive and productive.”
At the world’s largest digital nomad festival, an annual event in Bansko, a ski-town in Bulgaria, Schae was met with a rude shock — India is seldom on the map for any digital nomad. “They (digital nomads) want to go somewhere that’s safe and already vetted,” he said.
And so began his new-age tryst with his family estate — where Indian travel stereotypes are eschewed in favour of what aspires to be a geographical no man’s land, a digital nomad utopia. Schae divides the community into two — there’s the literal digital nomad, largely tech and corporate workers, and there’s the ‘creative’ nomad. Both Schae and Sonkatte advocate for a heady mix of both as the co-living sweet spot. He once had a management consultant who learnt aerial yoga, and a yoga teacher who learnt taxes — a skill exchange that digital nomads thrive on.
According to Sontakke, after Goa, Dharamkot is in line to be India’s next digital nomad hotspot, partly due to its reputation as a wellness and spiritual hub, and also because of its smart city tag.
But that’s not necessarily true.
“Due to various political and administrative reasons, the smart city mission couldn’t help Dharamshala much,” said Vinay Dhiman, Deputy Director Tourism, Kangra district. “Corporate people are coming because of the internet facilities and connectivity is definitely improving. But the potential of wellness tourism is enormous. We want to create infrastructure which supports wellness.”
At Gandhi’s Paradise, Sanjay Gandhi, head of the Kangra Hotel Association, recently played host to a senior Infosys manager for an entire month.
“Every day he was doing virtual calls,” said Gandhi. His hotel in Dharamkot, built in 1998, was the area’s first concrete building. “Lots of meetings were happening. We’ve been negotiating prices, and he wants to come back with his entire team.” He also took his guests to the Kangra carnival, as he was also keen on ‘culture’.
Gandhi changed the layout of his rooms to cater to the needs of his tech-worker guest. This included expanding the kitchenette and adding a desk that looks out into the horizon. Digital nomads wind up staying in de-personalised rooms for months on end. Utility is key. They carry the bare minimum; their clothes and possessions whittled down to only what serves a purpose.
Gandhi’s Paradise also has what he calls a ‘viewpoint’, essentially a glass box with mattresses and low-slung furniture that looks out into the mountains. In the distance, the Dhauladhar Range is visible.
Now, other than catering to the needs of weekend tourists and honeymooning couples, Gandhi has found himself modifying both his old-style hotels to accommodate the needs of long-term travellers. This includes expanding his kitchenette and adding a desk.
A spectrum of work
Riyam’s first stint in Dharamkot life was in 2020, when according to him, the town was dotted with digital nomads and a palpable sense of community –– a refreshing breather from city-life.
In cities, conversations are more mechanised and routine-oriented.
However, the freewheeling, unstructured conversations of Dharamkot are what landed him a friend and a co-founder.
Several digital nomads maintained that they never compromised on work — their calls and deliverables are non-negotiables.
But there’s a spectrum at work. According to Riyam, who lives between Dharamkot and Goa, digital nomadism is seasonal. They follow a migration pattern, retreating to warmer climes in the winter. Comfort cannot be compromised upon. And so, some digital nomads — tired of juggling both their worlds — give up on one. They choose travel over work.
A number of professionals said that places like Dharamkot are also repositories of “wasted potential” — filled with people who abandon work altogether.
“They come up with excuses to remain here [even if their companies are calling them back home]. They say they can no longer travel back to their home cities. Being away becomes a necessity,” Riyam said.
In Goa, a first-of-its-kind digital nomad policy is currently in the works. The government is also working on a Digital Villages and Hubs project that looks to convert 100 villages into “dedicated spaces for digital nomads and creative professionals to live, work, and engage with local communities”.
“Goa is positioning itself as a favoured destination for digital nomads,” said Prashant DS, CEO of the state’s start-up and IT promotion cell. “The state government is also in discussions with the centre regarding a digital nomad visa, and an app to benefit nomads will be released in December.”
According to him, in the case of Dharamshala, the internet is there — but there needs to be more PR. It needs to be marketed as a place of self-discovery, which is also where NomadGao comes in as an in-built marketer owing to its already present community.
The aspiration is there. Arwinder Veer Singh is on vacation with his family from Ludhiana. They’re at a cafe, taking photographs of each other and drinking cups of tea. He’s surrounded by people who’re either working on their laptops or writing diligently in their notebooks.
“Sometimes I think maybe I should get a product manager job, so I can do this too,” he said. After finishing his MBA, he works in a Chennai-based company. The ‘vibe’ is different. It doesn’t have a nightlife like Gurgaon, he added.
Ways to unwind
At NomadGao, karaoke nights are a routine affair. After spending the day on calls and hooked on to their screens, nomads unwind through a menagerie of songs sung by a bonfire. It’s a misty night and few stars are visible.
An otherwise quiet night is interrupted by old Bollywood songs, and Eric Claption’s Wonderful Tonight. It’s mostly karaoke favourites — and invariably, the ’70s hit Who The Fuck is Alice is a crowd pleaser for the group of about 10 people. The psy-trance parties are on the other side of town, frequented more by Dharamkot’s Israeli inhabitants than the usually straight-laced digital nomads.
On occasion, people descend into their conversations, but these are put to a swift halt. Community is paramount.
Conversations centre around the best spot to see the full moon and weekly game nights. As the night progresses, people begin to talk about their aspirations — what they’d be doing if they weren’t in their current professions.
“Even though I’m a software engineer, I’ve always been creative,” said one. “I want to open a seafood restaurant in Goa,” another chimed in.
A Dharamshala-based doctor’s dream is to own a camper van that is both an OPD and a cafe.
A day later, they trek to a point where the moon is blinding. Everyone takes sips from a single bottle of wine. One begins to roll a joint.
“This is also an art,” said Sid seriously, referring to preparing a joint. The discussion then meanders into whether planets twinkle. His dream is to build a ‘workation’ start-up and perhaps a side gig.
“It would be nice to start a cult.”
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)