This is what you will get access to immediately when you join
💬 Community Chat
You will be added to the WhatsApp community after verification is completed.
You will be able to join different focused groups within the community:
- Announcements group
- 💬 DIY Community Chat
- 🔍 Find Trek Buddies
- ⭐ Member Wins
All important updates and announcements are posted here.
Most active group where you can ask your questions about anything related to independent hiking, discuss community projects, give feedback & more!
Use this to invite other members to join your hike plans or request to join their hiking plans.
Share your recent trek experience, pictures, trail info, GPX files, etc here.
👟 Community Hikes
As a member, you can join community hikes! Community hikes happen almost throughout the year.
The major focus is to:
- Ensure that each member gets introduced to their own fears (exposure, animals, injuries, panic) in a gradual manner so that they could acknowledge and overcome these fears.
- Ensure that each member gets to learn and practice the basics (navigation, planning, outdoor leadership) of DIY Hiking.
- Ensuring confidence building so that members could plan DIY hikes on their own and start mapping more trails.
- Feel free to questions during the hike that will help you become a better hiker.
🔍 Finding Trek Buddies
Use the Find Trek Buddies WhatsApp group to find co-trekkers.
How to post
- Try to be as clear and as detailed as possible in your post.
- Mention dates, trek name or region where you want to hike, number of co-trekkers you are looking for, etc
Some examples:
- Anyone wants to hike Harishchandragad this weekend?
- Planning to do Hampta pass next month. Looking for 2 co-trekkers.
- I am in Manali. Here for 2 weeks. Who else is here? Let’s explore the trails around this region.
🏕️ Field Course
Course details can be found on the website here: creedaz.in/course
Field courses are short, in-person courses to learn all the essential skills & knowledge you need to explore the outdoors independently with confidence in DIY-style.
Join a field course if you want to jumpstart your outdoor journey & prefer a structured learning format with lots of outdoor practice and 1-1 attention.
Member Benefits:
- Priority Enrolment : As a member, you’ll be given priority to reserve your seat in a batch over non-members applicants
- Scholarship : The course fee will be reduced by the amount you have already contributed to join the community or the scholarship amount that was decided at the time of your joining the community.
📕 Independent Hiking book
As a member, you get early access to the book.
It has all the theory that every DIY trekker needs to know before stepping out into the wild — written in bite-sized chapters in simple language.
It will save you hours of research & can be used as ready-reference anytime.
Modules
- Practical Topography
- Outdoor Navigation
- Hiking in India
- Gear
- Camping
- Hiking Techniques
- Planning & Execution
More modules are underway.
🚀 Zero to DIY workshop
A 4.5 hour long online workshop that exposes you to everything you need to know
This workshop covers:
- Common myths & fears about hiking and outdoors
- Introduces the 5 stages of growth for independent hikers
- Give you exposure to the skills & knowledge required hike safely and confidently
⚙️ Gear Recommendations
You can find the list of community-curated gear recommendations in the google sheet linked in the box.
A note on buying affordable ultra-light gear:
- Ultralight hiking gear is scarce in India. Most of the items are either not available and if they are, they are usually extremely expensive.
- Affordable alternatives are mostly manufactured in South East Asia (SEA) and China, but the recent ban on platforms like Alibaba and AliExpress has further reduced accessibility.
🛡️ Alerts - an emergency alert tool
Tell the Alerts app where you are going and when you are expected to return back to civilization. The app checks in with you at that time. If you don’t respond, then an emergency alert is triggered to your emergency contacts alerting them that you maybe in a potential emergency situation.
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Note:
- You need a gmail account to sign up + you and your emergency contacts must be on WhatsApp number to receive check-in messages and alert messages.
- Runs in any browser, you don’t need to download or install anything.
- Warning : This tool is in private beta right now & available only for community members. Please report any issues/bugs so that we can improve it.
Read the announcement here:
Launch Post🗺️ SoI (Survey of India) Map Tiles
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Total ~5 GB. Individual files vary from 300MB to 1.2GB
How to use : Refer to “Using SoI in OSMAnd” section in the “Hiking Unmapped Trails” chapter in the book
📝 Trail Notes
Links to useful blogs, videos and docs created by community members
- (link removed in preview) by Swarup
- (link removed in preview) by Amit
- (link removed in preview) by Pete
- (link removed in preview) by Meera
- (link removed in preview) by Saurabh
- (link removed in preview) by Manav
💡 Trek Recommendations
By region, season/month and difficulty
Use this to reduce your time and effort to shortlist hikes you could do based on where & when you want to hike.
How to use:
- Choose a difficulty level from the tab
BeginnerModerateDifficult - Scroll down to the month you want to hike in.
- Choose from the list of treks recommended across different hiking regions.
🤙 1-on-1 Trek Planning Sessions
As a member, you can get 1-1 help from Manav in planning your DIY treks.
The purpose of this call would be to help you find answers to your execution-related concerns.
How to get 1-1 help:
- Decide the trek / region & do your research
- Prepare the list of questions you need help with & send the list of questions to Manav via WhatsApp.
- Manav will coordinate a time & schedule the call.
Manav will always try to respond as soon as possible, but there could be some delay when he is on a hike himself or teaching a course or has poor network.
🏴☠️ Stranded-&-Shaken
Real-stories of hikers who were left stranded-&-shaken — and what we can learn from their experience.
Story #1 (link removed in preview)
Story #2 (link removed in preview)
Story #3 (link removed in preview)
We will document the incident & share lessons in the community.
Your story will be shared anonymously and your identity will be protected (the focus is on the lessons, not the person).
🧩 Co-hiker Compatibility Checklist
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🤔 FAQs
Answers by community to frequently asked questions.
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A huge shout out and thank you to all the members who take the time to share detailed answers, advice and info in the community. This community will be nothing without you 🙏
🤝 Networking
Members can join meet-ups and networking events
Meet-ups are held in major cities but members can also find each other and connect 1:1 directly using the member directory.
There are all kinds of people in the community - from CEO of multi-million dollar company & consultants to developers & marketing folks to lawyers & life coaches to students and freelancers to full time athletes and mountaineers to actors & life coaches.
Connect with a these wide-variety of folks from different walks of life through community meet-ups.
🗓️ Community Events
Upcoming community hikes, events and course dates.
Nov
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Dec
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⏳ What’s next
We’re working on some exciting hiking resources so that you can hike more, for less, and safely
Here are some of the things on the roadmap:
- Hiking Guides & Private Trail Database
- More Trail Maps
- SOS App
- Member Directory
- More Community Hikes
And a lot more… ❤️
As we work on & roll out more member benefits & resources, we will update this space! We’ll post in the WhatsApp community to let you know when something new is rolled out.
🛟 Contact
8946823824
For any question related to DIY trekking and joining calendar events like community hikes & field courses
9828393136
For accessing your benefits & resources, enrolment status or your membership