Traveling opens the door to new experiences, landscapes and cultures, it is truly one of life’s greatest joys. But an often-ignored companion that comes along with the thrill of movement is hygiene challenges. And can we even call it a fond memory if the trip ended with battling illness?
The practice of maintaining cleanliness and adopting healthy habits while you’re on the move is what defines travel hygiene. It covers personal cleanliness, choosing safe meals and drinks for consumption, booking clean and comfortable accommodation spaces, and disposing of waste properly. Simply put, it’s protecting yourself by practicing basic steps that ensure your comfort, confidence and health while you’re on the move. Reports suggest that thousands of local and international travellers reconsider or call off their plans because of poor maintenance and absence of basic amenities available at Indian highway stopovers. It follows that travel hygiene has become India’s next global challenge.
The Reality Check: What’s Missing on Indian Highways?
If you’ve ever travelled on Indian highways, you may have noticed that in recent years, highways have been upgraded for smoother travel and development has advanced significantly. But alongside this progress, you’ve also possibly dealt with a common and persistent problem: unhygienic and shabby hotels and restaurants along the highways. From dirty washrooms to poorly maintained rooms and kitchens, many highway-side dhabas and budget hotels in India struggle to meet even the basic standards of hygiene. In contrast, countries like the UK, USA, and Japan maintain strict cleanliness and safety norms at their roadside hotels, creating a comfortable and healthy experience for travellers.
The gap is glaring. While India invests billions in building world-class highways, the supporting infrastructure, rest stops, eateries, and lodges—remains underdeveloped and largely unregulated. This mismatch is what prompted one startup to take action.
Enter Touching Towns: A Mission-Driven Initiative
Observing this glaring need, Touching Towns, a rising venture in the hygiene space, has taken charge to work diligently toward redefining hygiene standards across highway restaurants and hotels, ensuring a comfortable and clean experience for everyone travelling in India.
Due to lack of standardized practices and insufficient knowledge, the biggest challenge for highway eateries and lodging is maintaining consistent hygiene standards. Touching Towns seeks to change this overall shabby situation by creating a benchmark of comfort, hygiene, and trust. The major features they focus on include providing traveller-friendly amenities by ensuring sanitized dining areas and spotless washrooms; empowering employees with knowledge and helping them adopt hygiene practices by organizing cleanliness training and awareness drives; and providing a visible, trusted seal—hygiene certification—to hotels and restaurants that meet Touching Towns’ standards.
Building Awareness, Not Just Compliance
What sets Touching Towns apart is its philosophy. COVID-19 has made people more alert, and travellers now actively seek clean spaces where they feel safe. By making consistent efforts, Touching Towns is partnering directly with hotels, restaurants and rest areas along the Delhi-Chandigarh Highway, helping them improve their hygiene and hospitality standards. As an enabler, Touching Towns believes in educating about hygiene through awareness and pride, not by imposing penalties unlike other inspection agencies.
This awareness-first approach is proving effective. Rather than penalizing businesses for falling short, Touching Towns trains them, certifies them, and helps them see hygiene as an asset, not a burden. The initiative has sparked conversations among hotel and dhaba owners, many of whom are now taking pride in displaying their hygiene certifications.
A Vision Beyond One Highway
Anshuman Chaudhary, the founder, is dedicated to building a nationwide network of trusted, safe, and hygienic stopovers through training, on-site reviews, certification, customer engagement and awareness campaigns. He believes that hygiene isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity for every traveller who stops for rest after hours of driving. Touching Towns aspires to expand its venture to pan-India highways, positioning itself as a standard setter for trusted, hygienic, and well-maintained stopovers along the highway.
The startup’s long-term goal is ambitious but achievable: to create a culture where hygiene becomes the norm, not the exception, at every highway stop across India. As more travellers become aware and demand better standards, the ripple effect could transform the entire roadside hospitality sector.
Why This Movement Matters Now
India is at a crossroads. With rapid infrastructure development and a booming domestic tourism sector, the country has a unique opportunity to set global benchmarks—not just in road quality, but in traveller experience. Hygiene is no longer a back-end concern; it’s front and center in the minds of modern travellers, especially post-pandemic.
Touching Towns’ awareness drive is more than a business initiative, it’s a public health movement. By focusing on education, certification, and community engagement, the startup is laying the groundwork for systemic change. If successful, this model could be replicated across other sectors—railway stations, bus terminals, tourist spots wherever large numbers of people move and need reliable, hygienic facilities. As India aspires to compete on the global tourism stage, initiatives like Touching Towns remind us that infrastructure is not just about roads and bridges, it’s also about dignity, safety, and care for every traveller on the journey.
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