When it used to be illegal to be gay in India, we used Grindr to find out to discover the gay parties taking place in Delhi – without it, there was no other way for gay travellers to find out about them unless you already knew people locally. We had never thought to do this beforehand. When we were travelling in Russia on the Trans Siberian railway, visiting places like Yekaterinburg and Irkutsk where there are no gay hangouts, our friends told us that we needed a Grindr profile to get the local ‘word' on what's happening. However, when travelling to a country outside this pink bubble, we found that Grindr literally “became” the gay scene, and was more an important way of finding out about any underground gay parties happening as well as connecting with LGBTQ locals.
In this day and age, our iPhones have pretty much become our main go-to-item for almost everything, with apps to cover all the things above, and more. When it came to travelling, we simply had a Lonely Planet guide, a compass (for the geeks amongst us), an alarm clock on our wristwatch, a walkman with a few spare cassette tapes, those old-style cameras and a few spare negatives… (and naturally, plenty of spare condoms/lube, let's not leave out the essentials!)
Since we began travelling in our more (ahem!) junior years, smartphones didn't even exist…Cue our elder Millennial lecture about the good old days…īack then, the Internet was limited to email, ICQ and Windows Live Messenger. Which are your favourite gay apps for travelling boys?