Vacation planning tips
The secret ingredients are not what you think
Berlin 2014. I’m trying to get my husband, Child 1, aged 10 and Child 2, aged 6, to the Bundestag. I have been told it is architecturally fabulous, and I have pre-booked an online slot.
But the family is not cooperating. There is an ice cream craving to fulfil, then a loo break (of course), and how can we not stop and smell the pretty flowers and feed bread crumbs to the cute little squirrels in the park? My anxiety about being late is mounting. Rahul, the ever-indulgent father, is not saying no to the kids.
We don’t make it.
I sulk. We squabble. It is not a good day.
Thankfully, I have anticipated some of this and booked an alternate slot too, so we can return a day later, and it is worth it. Here are some pics to prove it.
But this post isn’t about the architectural beauty of the Bundestag (I waxed eloquently about it in this post, which happily omits the stressful spat). It’s the story of how I discovered the secret to fabulous family vacations.
Even before Berlin, our vacations never consisted of the whirlwind tours many of our friends seemed to enjoy. We took week-long trips to Barcelona (us, the kids, and the mums) and Istanbul (just Rahul and I), but, between my mindset of maximising each travel opportunity and Rahul’s efforts to find activities to please everyone, every trip saw tempers run high and exhaustion kick in. I certainly felt pressure to tick the main sights off the checklist, a carryover from my childhood when resources were scarcer and travel was not merely leisure but a precious educational experience. This Insta reel (a clip from the wonderful Inside Out 2) reminded me that, like other moms, I felt the pressure to make every vacation fun-filled and joyous but ended up losing my sh** instead!
Thinking back, it’s likely that this stressed version of me felt normal because I had grown up observing my mother’s anxiety around travel. We come from a culture where vacationing, in the sense of seeing-the-sights tourism and collecting experiences, is a recent concept. When we were little, we visited grandparents and relatives during vacations. My mother, an avid traveller to date, was unique in her passion for travel. Thanks to her meticulous planning and dogged determination to ensure everything fell in place, including getting my workaholic dad to take a break, I saw diverse parts of India at a young age. A white peacock dancing in Kanha Wildlife Sanctuary, holding Bharatanatyam poses inside spectacular Hoysala temples, and hiking the Western ghats are some of the experiences that form a part of my “core memories” that shaped my personality, to follow Inside Out terminology.
Without my own formed thoughts about the intent and structure behind travel, I was following an older script of anxiousness and over-planning for several years. But it was not working, not in the least, because vacation planning is not my talent at all!
But things began to change slowly. From my friend Shubha, with whose family we had the privilege of hiking and camping in Ladakh in 2018, I learnt that pre-planning and outsourcing logistics to specialised experts allow you to ‘live in the moment’ and derive the maximum out of the travel experience. More interestingly, last year, on a vacation to Thailand, we learnt we could be quite accommodating when our getaway was hijacked by the Great Indian Wedding! In a bizarre coincidence, someone we sort of knew was getting married at the resort we were booked into on the same dates, something we discovered as we checked in! It was a fun experience to take the situation in our stride, dipping in and out of wedding festivities where our torn shorts and beach dresses stood out in a sea of wedding finery, and also managing a lot of quality family time.
Ten years since Berlin, this summer, I found myself - for the first time ever - able to switch my planning brain completely off while vacationing with my family. There was so much more joy during our recent US trip to New York City and Cape Cod because we minimised planning and maximised spontaneity. Except for the flights in and out, broad brush hotel bookings and tickets for a Broadway musical, we did not follow a preset schedule. Instead, we planned a day at a time, deciding the next day’s activities only the evening before. This way, we accommodated everyone’s preferences and covered a range of activities, including museum visits, hikes, sketching sessions, urban walks, kayaking, eating interesting food, watching shows and joining tours. Of course, I fully acknowledge Rahul’s superior logistics skills in this (I took the outsourcing tip seriously!). But I’m delighted to have realised that the secret sauce for a great family holiday, beyond the planning and logistics, has two important ingredients: spontaneity and flexibility. I would recommend everyone try them out!
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Thank you Mukta. As someone who doesn’t travel because “it takes so much planning” this is super helpful. Would love to outsource and be in the moment. ❤️
Get it Mukta. The spats and all.