Why bother to holiday with the parents-in-law

Having said that, it does not mean that your parents and you, living in separate universes, do not meet. It is a given that you and your spouse will create opportunities to meet the parents. If you are staying in the same city as the parents then celebrations, weekends, dining-out, movies are all occasions to strengthen bonds and show that out-of-sight is not out of mind. However, if you all are staying in different cities then the occasions are a few and the time spent short and precious.

Holidaying with your spouse and the folks is an opportunity to bring the two universes together and revel in the occasion. However, to ensure that the universes do not cataclysmically disintegrate [yes I am being dramatic] during this moment in time you need to keep a few things in mind.

Your spouse and you are a team

This needs to be stated at the outset to ensure that you do not spend too much time with your folks at the cost of your spouse and your spouse does not ignore your folks to your chagrin and their discomfort. As a unit you not only have each others backs but work together to make this outing for the parents an enjoyable and memorable one. As a team, work not only reduces but there is appreciation for what the other brings to the moment.

Discuss and find common interests

Discussing holiday plans with your spouse and parents provides more things to do as interests, not known till then, may align. Thus the holiday entourage can split into smaller groups ensuring others are not forced to do things they are not interested in. Common interests could become a corner stone to improve interpersonal relationships.

Spousal spats should not be public

Spousal infractions are a given and there is no right time for one. However, when holidaying with your parents it would be best to let go in order to avoid these tiffs. Such fights tend to weaken the holiday mood and unnecessarily give your parents a reason to worry.

Spend time with the folks

You and your spouse should independently spend some time with the parents. This is a chance for them to bring you upto speed on how they are enjoying the holiday.

Include your spouse during reminiscing sessions

Unwinding during holidays can bring back a flood of family memories. These discussions unfortunately may keep out the spouse. These are occasions to bring your spouse upto date on family history and share your memories. It is also an occasion for your spouse to see your parents in a different light – as young people far removed from who they are now.

Do something special with your spouse

Just because your parents are along does not mean that you cannot plan something with your spouse. Remember the holiday is as much about bonding with the parents as it is about the spouse. Plan your holiday to include time just for the two of you. Your spouse will love it, you will enjoy it and your parents may just get the time they wanted but were unwilling to ask for.

When holidaying with both set of parents

Holidaying with both set of parents can be like juggling with knives. However, it need not be so if you are mindful of the above and the following points:

Do not spend time on your parents only

It is not surprising if you wish to show more concern and make more effort for your parents. After all being their child you want to make their holiday special. It may also be that you do not get along with your in-laws. On the other hand you may want to do more for the in-laws because it makes your spouse happy or just because you like them. Whatever may be the case it may lead to some heartburn for the other party. Therefore it is important that your spouse and you communicate as a team to ensure both sets of parents are given equal attention.

Stop any attempts at family competitions

Attempts to stand out are natural. Parents would like to believe that they and their children are special, they would like to crow about success, sacrifices and unique experiences. Sometimes this is done unconsciously. However, any form of one-upmanship must be nipped in the bud. What matters now is that your spouse thinks you are special and that the two of you together live through the successes and sacrifices that knock on your door.

Do not interfere in a spat between your spouse and his/her parent

Adults will always be seen as children by their parents. The conundrum is that parents love to give advice and also seek counsel from their grownup children. So even on such vacations there will be occasions for child-parent tiffs. Though you may want to douse this flareup and or support your spouse, do not. Unless called to intervene, it is best to let the spat die a natural death and then talk to your spouse and parents separately.

Find occasions for the two sets of in-laws to do things together

In other words find time for yourself and your spouse to do things together. Such vacations are also about your fledgling family memories that you two create. In the planning stage you could suggest things that the two sets of parents can do together whilst clearly indicating that you would like to spend some alone time with your spouse.

Parent child interaction differ from family to family. These differences are in your face when you and your spouse together vacation with your parents. The expectations of your parents and those of your in-laws need to be balanced against those of your relationship with your spouse. In conclusion one must remember what Henry Miller said, ‘One’s destination is never a place, but always a new way of seeing things.’ which can extend to holidays with your spouse and parents.

The post When you decide to take your parents-in-law on a vacation appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Having said that, you need to take care of a few things to ensure everyone enjoys this adventure.

Health

Do visit the doctor and get a health check up done for your parents, preferably before making any bookings. Also ensure that you carry a health certificate from the doctor [especially when flying and travelling abroad].

Medicines

Carry the prescribed medicines and prescriptions for the duration of the trip. Carrying their medical files may be helpful if it is a long holiday. If travelling abroad, keep in mind the time difference as this will impact the schedule of medications. Confer with your doctor on how this needs to be dealt with.

Insurance

Insurance has become an important part of the everyday, especially if one works in the private sector. Buying travel insurance is vital to meet any exigencies when travelling abroad . Even within India it becomes important when vacationing with the elderly. Air ambulances do not come cheap. There is the added benefit of being treated by doctors who know the patients medical history.

Booking a hotel

When booking a hotel one usually checks for deals, location, free buffets etc. However, when travelling with elderly parents there are other issues that need to be kept in mind:

• Presence of a bathtub in the bathroom. A bathtub can be a physical hazard for the elderly because they may not only find it difficult to raise their leg to enter and get out of the tub but also could lose their balance in the process.
• Provision of bathroom stools for your parents to sit and bathe.
• Distance of your room from the restaurant.
• Dietary requirements. Eg: In Asia, most often vegetarian food is cooked with fish sauce.
• Provision for a bidet-spray in the toilet. [Some hotels and cruise liners only provide toilet paper]

Booking tours within the city

Do ascertain the quantum of walking that is required when booking a city tour. Tour operators may be able to make provision for wheelchairs if they are informed in advance. Also clarify if a wheel chair attendant will be provided. It would be best if parents carry their own bags that have snacks, water, medicines.

Air tickets

There are many boxes to tick when buying air tickets:

• Ensure that you inform the airlines that you are travelling with senior citizens {and whether you require wheelchairs}. Keep in mind, some airlines offer a senior citizen discount.
• As some airlines use the same wheel chair for different flights ensure that the wheel chair is with you from check-in to boarding so that your parents can be ferried to the toilet when required.
• Ensure they wear comfortable clothes and shoes for the flight.
• For long haul flights ensure they walk and stretch on the flight to avoid cramps or DVT [deep vein thrombosis].

Dietary habits

Travelling is an opportunity to experience new cultures through food. If there are dietary restrictions then do get the hotel reception to write, in the local language, the dietary restrictions.

Maintaining a schedule

Keeping to a schedule ensures nobody gets tired, medicines are had on time and everyone is prepared. This also preps your parents for the day, as surprises can be disconcerting for the elderly. The schedule should cater to time requirements of your parents. Things that should be kept in mind include sleep patterns and morning routines. Rushing unnecessarily increases everyone’s stress levels and compromises the potential for fun.

Keeping your parents informed

Discuss the trip with your parents and get their inputs. Part of maintaining a schedule is keeping your parents informed. This gives them a sense of control and also ensures that they can suggest changes if required. To help in this communication process you need to:

• Create an excel sheet with activities/flight times and other information which everyone should have
• Go through the excel sheet with them
• Parents should carry a tote bag with their documents, medicines, snacks and water during travel. You could keep a master copy with yourself.

Money

Though as a responsible individual you may wish to spend on your parents, it’s important that they carry their own money too. Parents may not like to ask their children for money and a lack of access to money could dilute their fun. Needless to say, this is an unnecessary form of dependence and should be avoided.

Rest

Flights can be fatiguing, not only because of their duration but also because of the travel and processes before and after the flight. Therefore it is advisable to slot in a day on arrival to recuperate before beginning sightseeing. A day of rest before the flight back home should also be slotted in for the same reason.

Misplacing items

Elderly tend to forget things and this is one of the reasons for things getting misplaced. The stress of the journey can also cause your parents to ‘misplace’ things. Searching for such things add to the stress as it reminds them of their frailty, they feel apologetic for wasting time and adding to your ‘things to do’. The way out is to (1) Keep calm (2) Keep a master copy (3) Keep things in perspective so that these moments are not dwelled on and therefore spoil the holiday.

Me time

Make sure that your parents don’t feel that they are coming in the way of you enjoying yourself on the trip. There is no doubt that you will relish the company of your parents, but you also need to do things that are suitable for your age and interest. Therefore keep some time for yourself. Such occasions can also be an opportunity for your parents to do things on their own or rest.

Decision making

As your parents grow old, they turn to you to help them make decisions. In your holiday there will be many occasions when you will be asked to make decisions, infact you may be making all the decisions. You could be called upon to recollect whether they have had their medications besides being asked to make a decision on what to order. Realise that roles have changed and therefore there you will have to be patient with them. Instead of making decisions suggest options and be supportive. It will reduce pressure on you while increasing opportunities of adventure.

Travelling with your parents takes adventure to a whole new level because now your role is that of an adult who needs to cater to the people who took care of you. These are moments to see new places and surprise each other with personal facets that do not emerge in the everyday. By taking care of these basic things you open the door to experiences to build on memories and foster your relationship with your folks.

The post A complete guide to planning a vacation with senior parents appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

1. Walking to explore

Remember to include your most comfortable walking shoes when packing for a holiday. Walking can be the best way to stay active on a vacation. Even before you start your adventure, stroll up and down the airline terminal. Why sit and wait for your flight? You will be doing plenty of that once you’re on the plane.

Walking is perhaps the best way to experience local life of the place you are visiting. Look out for restaurants that are close to your hotel and enjoy a cool evening walk towards your dinner destination. Strap on your shoe laces and go hiking. Forget gaining wait, you may return home having lost a few kilos.

2. The elevator is not your friend

Elevators take both you and your weight up. Unless you have a severe knee problem or are suffering from arthritis, avoid using the elevator. Whether it’s in your own hotel or a museum you are visiting, climb the stairs.

3. Pack healthy snacks

When packing food for a holiday, we tend to choose foods that are easy to carry and have a longer shelf life. But don’t forget to consider their health quotient too. Carry whole grain crackers, dry fruits, energy bars and laddoos made out of dates and dry fruits. Carrying these healthy snacks diminishes your likelihood of binging on packaged junk food while travelling. Once you reach your destination, visit the local grocery and stack your bag with fruits and healthy local snacks. Eat more natural foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts; avoid or at least minimise your consumption of processed foods. Also check whether the hotel kitchen caters to requests like low-oil meals and green juices for breakfast.

4. Does your hotel have a gym?

If you are planning to stay at one location for a long time, make sure they have an in-house gym or a fitness centre nearby. If your hotel offers yoga or meditation classes, book a few sessions for yourself. It’s a beautiful experience to practise yoga on a holiday—it keeps you energetic and upbeat throughout the day.

5. Be consistent

“Doing something is a whole lot better than doing nothing at all,” says athlete Scott Danberg. Let this be your motto while vacationing. If you regularly workout at the gym, go for a run or do suryanamaskars, continue the practice. If you usually eat light for breakfast, don’t stuff yourself just because the breakfast is complimentary. Decide to have just one treat everyday and not let yourself loose at every meal. Another good rule is to avoid eating two heavy meals in a row. If one meal is heavy, keep the next one very light.

6. Stay hydrated

You probably already know that alcohol adds a lot of calories. But it’s vacation time and you want to drink. All right, but balance it out by avoiding the extra calories in colas, coffees or fruits juices with sugar. Drink lots of water throughout the day. Also, don’t order sodas or liquor to go with every meal. Moderation is the key.

The post A guide to staying fit while travelling appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Wayanad

1 of 13

I was passing through the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary in Bandipur, Karnataka. A lone pachyderm stood by the road, swaying his tusk and grazing the grass. I stopped the car and gazed at him. I remembered someone telling me an elephant who roamed all alone was considered dangerous. I wondered if this one would go rampant but soon spotted his fellow herd-mates behind the tall bushes. They looked majestic and intimidating as a group.

Although I could have stood there and admired them all day, I had to bid adieu to these beasts; I was on my way to the land of tea, coffee, rubber and spices—Wayanad, Kerala.

Ancient caves and misty waterfalls awaited me

Wayanad lies perched on the fertile hills of the Western Ghats, covered in dense foliage. As I drove into the district, the road snaked and curved through the verdant hills that are peppered with ponds and lakes.

My first destination was the Edakkal caves. Located in a remote area in the district, these caves lay surrounded by sprawling coffee plantations. To get there, I had to make my way through the town of Sulthan Bathery, its name a corrupted form of Sultan’s Battery. The great ruler Tipu Sultan had stored his ammunition and artillery in an old Jain temple here. The beautiful temple still stands strong after all these years.

The security personnel tagged the plastic items I had in my bag to make sure I brought them with me on my return

Onward I went, making my way to the Ambukuthimala Mountain, atop which lie the caves. It’s a 4000-foot hike and I managed to trudge my way to the top. Climbing around 300 steep steps for an hour left me huffing and puffing in the warm weather. At the entrance to the caves, I was surprised and glad that the security personnel tagged the plastic items I had in my bag to make sure I brought them with me on my return.

The name “Edakkal” means “a stone in between” and is a reference to the giant boulder that apparently wedged itself between two huge rocks to form these pseudo caves. Although they were discovered by a British officer in 1895, these caves are home to etchings and pictorial writings that are around 7000 years old. As I looked at these pictures of pre-historic humans, animals and customs, I couldn’t help but ponder over how life must have been like in those times.

After the caves, I next wanted to explore the Soojipara or Soochipara waterfall. I drove to the village of Meppady and then made my way to the waterfall. The scenic cascade’s name means “needle-like [sooji] rock [para]” and refers to the thin, spiky rocks that lie at its base. To get to the waterfall, I had to trek downhill on a stony path; then finally I saw the torrent pouring like a dream, with its mist spraying in all directions. I was drenched and refreshed basking in the fresh mountain air and water. My first day at Wayanad had tired me but it had also tickled the explorer in me.

There were fresh green tea gardens on hilly slopes and long pepper vines were draped around the majestic silver oaks

Spice central

A search for a place to put my feet up took me to the picturesque village of Vythiri. I could hear the azaan, the Islamic call to worship, being played in the nearby mosque. As I took in the beauty of the village, I noticed that the landscape had changed. There were fresh green tea gardens on hilly slopes and long pepper vines were draped around the majestic silver oaks. Every tea plantation was an abode of spices.

As I entered the grounds of Pranavam homestay, I noticed the grass growing under my feet was actually a wild variant of coriander and it had the same strong fragrance. My eyes scanned the yard and found turmeric and ginger shrubs crowded together by the fence and green chillies hung on tender twigs. A walk around the village, after resting for a bit, was a treat for my senses. Cloves, bay leaves and cardamom were found in copious numbers throughout the village.

Among the many natural beauties I saw were several kinds of birds, like hornbills, bulbuls and kingfisher

The next morning I woke up early so that I could take in the dew-laden sights of the area. Walking through the paddy fields and betel nut groves, inhaling the fresh morning air, to view the first daylight are experiences that shouldn’t be missed when in Wayanad. Among the many natural beauties I saw were several kinds of birds, like hornbills, bulbuls and kingfishers.

Back at the homestay, a scrumptious breakfast was prepared for me. I dug into the spread of hot idiyappams, boiled nenthra pazham or banana halwa and finished it off with steamed rice cylinders called puttu. The authentic Kerala breakfast packed me with energy for the adventures that awaited me.

Tribes of Wayanad

It is estimated that 17 different tribes inhabit the region of Wayanad, with Kuruchiya considered the highest caste. My first stop was in the village of Thrikkaipetta where I discovered an NGO called URAVU, which helps the local tribal community by providing them with sustainable work. They teach the locals how to make various environment-friendly products from bamboo—bags, furniture, handicrafts, utensils and curtains. This has not only helped the tribal people find a stable livelihood, but it has also encouraged sustainable practices.

Next, I moved on to the village of Ambalavayal. One of the sights that first caught my eye was the betel nuts that were laid out to dry in the various courtyards. I was there to visit the house of a Paniya tribesman, Vellan Moopan. As I stepped into his home, I could hear the low pitch of a musical instrument. Upon moving in further, I saw him scrapping the thudi, a local percussion instrument. Made of sheep skin, jackfruit wood, bamboo and latex, the thudi is played at the tribe’s funerals and marriages. It normally takes 20 days to make one thudi. Sadly, Vellan is one of the few artisans left in Wayanad who are working hard to save this traditional art form.

The people of Wayanad haven’t forgotten their roots even though the bustle of modern life surrounds them

For lunch, I had brown rice with fish fry and curry, with a side of boiled tapioca and red chillies chutney. Fish is found in abundance in Wayanad and is part of almost every meal.

It was time for me to move ahead and visit Govindan from the Kuruma tribe. One look at his belongings, which were bows and arrows of various shapes and sizes, was enough to tell me that archery was in his blood. A keen instructor, he tried to teach me the ancient art. After many failed attempts I gave up and was content to sit and eat the canistel that he offered me. Canistel is also called eggfruit because of its flesh, which tastes just like a boiled egg’s yolk.

A model for the rest of us

In those few days in Wayanad I noticed the people of this land had learnt to live in harmony with nature. By adopting sustainable practices and preserving traditional art forms, the inhabitants had learnt to live a simple yet contented life. They haven’t forgotten their roots even though the bustle of modern life surrounds them. I was puzzled as to what motivated them to live like this. A native gave me the answer: “These are our jewels and we better protect them before they are lost”.

This was first published in the September 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post Why not visit Wayanad this year? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Passport processing can take up to six weeks or even more. So as soon as you start planning for your trip, you need to check the validity of your passport. Apply immediately if you don’t have it yet. If you already have yours, make sure that it hasn’t expired or nearing expiry. Remember, some individual countries require that you have at least six months on your passport before expiry to be allowed to enter. Also, if you have one of those older handwritten passports, get it reissued as soon as you can, because many countries do not consider those valid anymore.

2. Not making copies of your documentation

Keep a paper copy of your passport, visa and airline tickets in a travel folder, should you lose these essential documents. While many people photograph them and have it on their phones, this can be problematic if your phone is stolen, and the rate of theft of phones left idly on a coffee shop table is high. As a back up, always email yourself scanned copies of these essential documents, or save them on a cloud, so that you can access them anytime from anywhere.

3. Not figuring out airport transfers

Have you given yourself sufficient time between interconnecting flights? Some airports are huge and require a great deal of time to traverse between terminals.

4. Not knowing how to get from the airport to where you are going

What time are you arriving? What airport transfers are available? Do they run all day and all night? Certain airports stop their transfer services between certain dark hours of the night. Many people do not have a game plan to travel from the airport to their hotel, resort or place of stay. This needs to be pre-organised in many cases.

5. Not booking a place to stay—at least for the first night

This is a peace-of-mind decision. Knowing where you will stay on the first night gives a little breathing space and secures a safety net for you. There is nothing worse than standing in the middle of the airport, trying to decide where you will spend the night. This is could be an expensive mistake, especially since you are likely to be too tired to think straight and will go with the first option available to lay your weary head. Inevitably it will cost you an arm and a leg and probably be located in the remotest area.

6. Not factoring in the different time zones when booking your trip

This is one where we have been caught, with daylight savings hours kicking in and out at various times of the year. Check in advance to avoid arriving at your destination at an odd hour. If you have made transport arrangements you may find that these don’t go entirely according to your plans.

7. Not using RFID protectors

This is a prevalent crime where thieves electronically scan your credit card details and empty your account of all of your travel funds. Information can and is stolen electronically by Radio Frequency Identification and an RFID protected wallet made of particular blocking material gives you some peace of mind, though it is not entirely foolproof. We have been using one from Amazon as it came with excellent ratings by other customers. We have had no problem thankfully.

8. Not calling your credit card company

Have you informed your credit card company and bank that they will see transactions being made from the backwaters of wherever? The banks and credit cards companies might block your card, if they see unusual activity. This is done to safeguard you, should someone use RFID to steal your money; but it is bad if it is you standing in the middle of Chian Mai hoping to get some money for your Thai lunch. Inform your bank about your travel plans so they know that it is more than likely a hungry you. Ditto, if you have been robbed—ring them immediately and have your card cancelled. Most will have a back-up plan to get you your lunch and lodgings, so check that this is included.

9. Not checking your phone plan

This one could cost you the family castle. Ring your phone company and find out about international phone charges, and how much data usage will cost. Then check whether it is better to buy a local SIM card for the duration of your trip. Don’t forget there are other and sometimes cheaper ways of keeping in contact, like Skype and Viber and even a postcard.

10. Failing to research local transportation

Ignoring local transport is a significant problem as the price variations can be enormous. The last thing you want is to be wasting your travel time in figuring out the best and most affordable option to get around. Pre-plan or at least talk to local people who know what works best. Also be aware that train and bus stations are often known by different names locally compared to the official moniker.

11. Not buying health insurance

We all believe that we are infallible and that nothing will happen to us—that health insurance is money in their pockets and not your travel account. We hate to tell you but sometimes things do go amiss and you do not want to be paying out a huge amount in medical coverage or even worse, medical evacuation.

12. Not setting a budget

You need and must set a budget and then add 10 per cent on top of that because not everything will go according to plan, and unexpected costs inevitably crop up. Better still, make it 20 per cent of your allocated budget and then if you are doing well, treat yourself to something fancy—or start planning the next trip.

13. Keeping all your money in one place

This is a big consideration. Money belts can work for some people, but try not to make it obvious that you are wearing a money belt.

1. It says loud and clear—here is all of my money and probably my passport, just thought I’d help you out by making it as obvious as I possibly could, and
2. It makes you look terrible.

Being a woman, I keep my money in my bra though a Venezuelan friend has told me that this is the first place that Venezuelans will go for. How they do that, I have not ascertained. You could also keep money secure in a zippered front pocket or in a thief proof packet or bag, but advertising it is dumb.

14.  Using a currency exchange or money changers

If you change money on the streets, be prepared for inflated exchange rates from some less-than-scrupulous operators. You could change at your hotel, which is marginally better and a lot safer, or use an ATM taking all precautions to be aware of your surroundings and careful with your pin number. Also, when pocketing the money you have withdrawn be discreet. You will need to pay a small transaction fee to your credit card company or the bank, but it is safer by a long shot.

15.  Over packing

Yes, we are all guilty of this but we are advocating the approach of fashion icon Coco Chanel who said, “Before leaving the house, a lady should look in the mirror and remove one accessory.” In case of packing, we suggest you remove more than one accessory and more than one of everything. Seriously, pare down on what you think you need. Remember—you can wash on the road, you can replace on the road. Leave the kitchen sink at home. It is not a competition to look the most stunning; it is about travelling practical so that it allows you to walk a lot and explore your new destination.

16. Not being aware of local customs

A little research on your destination will help you to understand some of the do’s and the don’ts in various countries that you visit. These are important to the local people. As guests, it is a sign of respect to the country you visit that you try and adhere to these. Some countries require a more moderate dress code than Westerners on holidays are used to. Adapt. The sarong can be your greatest asset for covering a bare head and arms. Know where public displays of affection are frowned on and in many countries, so is patting the head of a child or pointing.

17. Not being aware of public holidays or weekly offs

Not a biggie, but public holidays in some places, particularly smaller towns, can render you incapable of eating or catching public transportation. Or, imagine reserving a day for shopping and discovering that it’s a weekly off for the markets.

18. Trying to see and do too much

So many people plan to see too much, just to prove that they have been somewhere. It doesn’t matter if you do not see everything that is iconic. Take your time and get a travel balance going just as you strive for a work-life balance. Have that afternoon nap or get your feet massaged. Give yourself some down time to regroup and also to savour what you have seen and done.

Many people are not honest about their interests, likes, and dislikes. Have an honest talk with yourself about what you actually want to see, and let serendipity have a free ride. See what comes your way, especially things that you were not expecting and had not planned on. These things make travel special and memorable.

This was first published in the March 2016 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post 18 Travel Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Foreign Holiday appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Homestay in Kutch

1 of 6

“Do you have food for your journey? What do you mean you’ll buy something on the way? Here, at least take these parathas. Travel safe and let me know once you’ve reached, okay? Come again.”

This is how I almost always part ways with my homestay hosts.

Travel is as much about visiting new places as it is about experiencing cultures. The former is the easier part of the equation: you contact a travel agent, they fix your itinerary and you whiz in and out of the place [or places] you had in mind. You get what you pay for. Well, almost. Because in many ways, it does not lend itself to skimming beyond the surface.

For those among us who have had the privilege of spending our vacations at our native hometown, we can reminisce the experiences they brought; be it climbing a mango tree or setting up a makeshift hammock beneath it to laze and read, or swimming in the river and spotting life-forms we may only have read about in our school textbooks, or even just eating the yummiest meals off the chulha! Everything was organic by default—at no extra cost! Summer holidays were about rekindling relationships with family who lived in another part of the country [or may be globe, even] and parting ways was not always easy.

One cannot travel to one’s native hometown all the time, just as one cannot have a family in every part of the country or globe. There may be exceptions, but not each one of us is so fortunate. That is when you are grateful for homestays. You can choose to have family anywhere you want and experience a new place as though you were dropping in at your relatives’.

Where does one begin to find a homestay? Is it safe? How do you know?

It is a lot easier today to scout for properties on the internet. One can begin based on the destination one is interested in exploring or, like me, look up properties that seem interesting and accordingly select the place.

Many homestay hosts maintain an online presence via a website, a Facebook page, a Twitter handle or a listing on TripAdvisor. Additionally, there are websites like AirBnB, Homestay.com, SaffronStays.com among others that you may use. This ensures that you not only know what the property looks like and how near or far it is from the airport/railway station/market place, but also read reviews by previous guests.

Note: There is a merit in knowing why someone might have rated a property as poor. Was the quality of service delivered not as promised? Or was it that a certain service could not be delivered because of some external constraints?

Take, for instance, places that face regular water cuts and electricity outages. These are external constraints and a homestay host can only do so much for you to ensure you live in what is otherwise considered a luxury—that you can avail a hot water bath [if, at all]!

This is why it is prudent to engage your host ahead of time over emails or a telephone call while planning your stay. It ensures there are no surprises once you get there.

What should you look out for?

Deciding on a homestay could seem a little daunting, especially for first-timers. These are a few things could check for after you have identified a property of your choice.

Not all properties have the host and his/her family living on its premises. Sometimes, hosts sublet their property under the watchful eyes of a caretaker and support staff that cook, clean and maintain the premises. This is great for those travellers who would like to experiment with homestays but are not sure if they would be comfortable with having the owners around!

What you pay for is what you get. The mistake you might make is to think that just because it is not a hotel, everything would be flexible. On the contrary, because it is not a hotel, things are not always as flexible. For instance, you might be required to give your host a heads-up if you have decided to sit-in and have a meal [as opposed to going to a local restaurant] so arrangements can be made. Hosts have to separately make arrangements for their guests. Most hosts will not serve the same food they would eat or hand over the linen they personally use to their guests. I’ve observed that even hosts in remote villages of Spiti and Ladakh maintain a separate ration to prepare food for guests. They do not serve us the same food they consume–unless you let them know you are keen on trying the local cuisine.

Some hosts may have more rules than others and rightfully so—it is their home after all. So whether it is the availability and consumption of non-vegetarian food and alcohol, openness towards smoking, consent to bring pets or a preferred time by which you may be required to arrive back on the property at night for safety reasons, it’s good to have these clarified at the outset

In my experience, hosts have been open to the idea of not just encouraging feedback but also making amends in order to create a more welcoming environment.

How to engage with your host?

With all the emphasis on communicating and engaging with the host, here are a few pointers:

• Speak to your hosts about the property and the available facilities be it meals or things you could do close to the property [like learning pottery or going trekking]. It may influence you to prolong your stay. Tell them a bit about yourself and learn a few things about them—a little familiarity always help.
• Enquire about sites you could see and places you could go to. Not everything gets covered in the guidebook. For someone who barely refers to guidebooks, having my host in Kutch outline my itinerary was the next best thing.
• Your host is your best go-to person to understand the right way to travel locally. Many have connected me with reliable rickshaw drivers or local travel operators ensuring that I do not get ripped off.
• Enhance your knowledge about the locally grown food, the culture and festivals of the places you are visiting by speaking
  to your host. This is how travel has made me wiser.

Who can opt-in for homestays?

There are no rules for who can opt for a homestay. You could be a solo traveller or be travelling with friends or family—it really does not change your reason for choosing a homestay. I have ticked every one of those check-boxes while choosing a homestay as my favoured style of accommodation.

Having said that, while anyone can and should experience homestays, the exception would be of someone who is extremely picky. Surely a homestay host will leave no stone unturned in extending not just their hospitality but even their home to you during your stay. But choosing homestays does not have to come at a barter price of you relinquishing your comforts. Just being candid and having an open dialogue with your host, ahead of your travel as well as during it, can ensure you both have an enjoyable experience.

The thumb rule of responsible travel is that you don’t do elsewhere what you won’t do in your hometown and it applies to homestays too. It is your home as well, albeit for a few days.

The post For your next vacation, skips hotels; try homestays instead appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Bhimtal

1 of 4

“Madam, look straight ahead and then a little to your right. I am the tall man in blue waving at you,” he said for the third time. I was at Kathgodam station, which is only as big as the size of the food court of New Delhi railway station, waiting with my two boys, to be taken an hour away to a colonial homestay atop a hill in Bhimtal. When I finally spotted the taxi driver I realised he had been five feet away from me, had spent 15 minutes just to make me spot him and was actually a short man in a green shirt! The unexpected nip in the air and the drizzle as we crossed the road made my antennae stand up. Have I packed enough for my three-year-old? Did my husband keep his wind cheater? Is it going to get colder?

I brushed off all worry. I had promised my husband that I would relax the feet of my mind and not fuss over whatever roles I played at home. We called our weekend trip the ‘Do Nothing Vacation’ and that was to include keeping not just sight-seeing lists unborn but also all concerns of the brain standing at ease. Little did I know then that what I had shrugged off with an easier-said-than-done expression was going to become a doable mantra for my vacations.

Much like so many towns of Uttarakhand, Bhimtal too has a lake for a heart, a temple on every hillock and ringlets of red sloping roofs surrounding them all. Typically, one would visit to go boating on the lake, eating noodles by the lakeside, posing by the hills, visiting the Gods and overall, breathing in the idea of a ‘hill station’. Not so typically, a tourist might book a homestay a little away from the hustle, carry shoes for easy trekking but also slippers for lounging around and no agenda except to eat fresh home-made food between doing something and doing nothing, alternately.

Doing something

A nursery-goer is a teen only when he reasons back. At all other times, his feet still fit in shoes not nearly the size of your hands. Which is what we kept in mind when we decided to indulge in three physically-involving activities, if only to rev up the hunger pangs for gorging on the delicious fare our hosts had to offer.

A long, circuitous drive away from our homestay lay Chauli Ki Jali, in Mukteshwar. I decided to trust the ‘Tall, blue shirt’ and make that day’s sunset special. The moody mountain weather had gone from chilly to sweaty, but oh dear, “Madam, if AC is on the car doesn’t climb”. Three city-bred spoilt brats dripped their way to what we were told was a breathtaking view from a rocky ledge. It was the absolute truth! As if the mountains were sentinels for a sun which was blushing, trying to hide behind their arms and yet eager to be admired as the clouds made way and stood by. I felt fortunate to have reached in time before it blinked for the night.

Over dinner, the cook told us about the legend associated with the place. How women would crawl through a narrow tunnel and sit perched on a precarious rock to prove their ‘morality’. As luck would have it, none in the history of Chauli ki Jali had lost their life to yet another unfavourably designed exam. Would I have survived it? I quickly filled up my mouth with a spoon full of caramel custard. The deliciousness dispelled all needless clouds of doubt.

Snaking through mountain roads as a child always made me wonder what lay beyond and below the fence which marked the edge of a road. Can one see where exactly two mountains meet in a valley overgrown with wilderness? A neat line, perhaps borrowed from a map, and as illusory? I did find out when we three trotted off for a Village Walk in Nathuakhan the next morning. With every step downhill, the paths were increasingly wet and slippery—or not there at all. What was there in abundance though were all shades of green and they were getting darker with the descent. A corn plantation shared apartment space with a cow shed. A few steps below stood a temple tree—old, grand and worshipped. I remember looking up from the bottom right to where we began at the top, my line of vision crossing houses and curious children, women carrying big bundles of sticks on feet in broken rubber slippers and past cracking sounds of pine cones. The sky looked as blue but the world around me was so far removed from what I witness in Delhi, it is difficult to imagine its existence sitting at my writing desk today. Likewise, the exact mountain scent without feeling nostalgic.

On his father’s shoulders, my son climbed all the way up that day, after much convincing that for the cute calf there was not room enough. I looked at my husband’s shoes leading, feeling for steady rocks. I wasn’t worried, at all. If anything, I was glad to see how the workings of gravity were well known to this clever three-year-old.

Clocks in cities run much faster than they do in small towns. And on hills they often seem to come to a standstill

The next day, rather encouraged, we decided to trek up to the Ridge, for a picnic. The Ridge is a long and narrow flatland which is essentially the top of a hill, overlooking Sat Tal on one side and the main town of Bhimtal on the other. With sticks in hands and the enthusiasm typical of early mornings, three pairs of feet set out to climb towards the prospect of earning their paranthas and apple pie. With frequent breaks for gazing at the world below or at the size of wild mushrooms, never seen before, we were finally perched at a point where, call it my hunger talking, everything seemed bite-sized [though not the lovers sitting across from us, disappointed at the intrusion]. There is something about being a family which sharing a meal brings out. If that meal happens to be some miles above the sea level, it’s closer to divine in all ways—a sense of oneness that nothing else can make you feel. Not just with one another but also with the nature that surrounds you: the breeze that keeps you cool, the canopy that provides shelter. Is that what the lovers were thinking sitting where they had walked hand-in-hand, far away from us now, under a tall fir?

This time, the daddy had done his homework and made the boy collect daisies for his mother all the way down. On his own two feet, walking by himself, rules of gravity forgotten.

But mostly doing nothing

Clocks in cities run much faster than they do in small towns. And on hills they often seem to come to a standstill. While with much bravado I fill you up on all that we did on the spur of the moment over the three days in Bhimtal, it barely covered a fraction of the time we spent doing… well, nothing at all!

How do you do nothing? Can you? Is it possible to empty the mind of all to-dos and tasks, thoughts that bother and deadlines of lives you and me call ‘ruts’ yet run circles in? It’s possible. It’s possible to do nothing but lie inside a child’s tent, pretend camping and make up stories about the grasshopper that hopped over to get a glimpse of the boy who finished his milk. It’s possible to sit a few yards away from this action, with a book, immersed in its joys. It’s also possible to just stare into infinity, and at birds who with their fluttering, bring you back to reality. There is enough in nature to create wonder and awe and as many nooks to visit with a beau, a boy, or a book. It is times spent thus that make you feel you did nothing and yet you realise how invaluable they were because you actually filled up those hours doing what you never get enough time to. How refreshing!

This was the first family vacation where I let all today’s worries and tomorrow’s agendas take wing like grass held up in the wind. It was almost a study in contrasts, of doing and not doing. A hangover of the intoxicating ‘letting-go feeling’ was carried back to New Delhi, enough to notice the tiny nose runny as soon as we bundled up in the train that was homeward bound but saying with conviction, “You’ve climbed mountains, my son. What can a silly runny nose do to you?”

The feet of my mind were indeed relaxed.

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post Vacation time: Doing nothing in Bhimtal appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Pangi Valley

1 of 6

A few months ago I woke up feeling melancholic about how my travels had started to become sterile and boring. Yes, I enjoyed them since they took me to exotic places but they were becoming predictable. It was becoming the same set routine: take a flight, check into a hotel, go explore the town, go to a fancy restaurant… each trip began to feel like the one before it. I knew that I would travel and stay in comfort, that the food would be fantastic, that there might be some odd curiosities in the town, but nothing more, nothing to astound me.

I found myself suddenly longing for that delicious uncertainty that would always accompany me when I first started travelling.

A plan is hatched

As a travel writer who thrived on excitement, I knew I had to take immediate action to get out of my doldrums. And so my friends and I hatched a plan to go on a road trip to Pangi Valley. This narrow valley within the Pir Panjal range in Himachal Pradesh is little known and is a short-cut from Chamba to Manali. The valley has  two high passes, one of them is the popular Rohtang Pass and the other is the spectacular Sach Pass.

A sunny September Saturday saw three of my friends and me at Teddy’s Lodge in Dalhousie tucking into breakfast served by none other than the owner of the lodge. Teddy Singh is ‘the’ grand old man of Dalhousie and he’s spent much of his youth leading trekking parties into Lahaul and Spiti. Today, even as he stands on the threshold of becoming an octogenarian, his spirit is as unflagging as triple distilled rum.

Fuelling up for the trip

A believer in bountiful breakfasts rather than debilitating diets, he had laid out a spread of porridge, fried eggs, toast with a thick layer of butter slapped onto it and rich apple pie. Knowing that this was probably going to be our last hearty meal till we get to Manali five days later, we ate with gusto.

With our bellies full, we loaded our vehicle and headed off towards Chamba via Khajjiar. A few kilometres into the drive, my buddy Kartik’s sudden yell put a halt on our sojourn. A big fat bumblebee had just stung him on the back of his head and within seconds the pain was radiating down his neck and shoulders. But an SOS call to Teddy Baba yielded a local treatment.

“Bloody hell” he boomed over the phone, “Why was he mucking around with the bee? Just find some marijuana leaves, crush them and apply the juice.”

Getting and applying the remedy was easy because cannabis grows wild in most Himachal districts. Soon Kartik was well again, though a little glassy eyed and vague.

That night we stopped at the Public Works Department [PWD] guest house at Bairagarh, a small town just before the ascent to the 14,500 feet Sach Pass begins. The watchman at the guest house offered to fetch groceries for our dinner, provided we cooked the meal ourselves. With three out of the four of us being ‘hobby chefs’ that was not a daunting task. So we took up his offer and 30 minutes later we had steaming green Thai curry and rice ready on the dinner table.

Refreshingly slow

The next morning we geared up for the climb to the spectacular Sach Pass—a highlight of our trip. At its almost stratospheric height, this pass has huge permanent glaciers that are the size of city blocks. After Bairagarh, all semblance of tarmac disappears. This meant that we would have to drive very slowly—at an average speed of about 14kph.

In the last few months, I had zoomed down country roads in the Czech Republic, driven on the German autobahns at ridiculous speeds and seen the countryside go by in a blur as I sat in a swift and silent Swiss train. The result of which is that I remembered the insides of the cars and trains very well, but not so much the landscapes. This experience of travelling slowly was refreshingly different. I appreciated the shapes of the clouds swooping across the magnificent mountains, spotted Himalayan hares scurrying out of their burrows and gazed with wonder at a Himalayan Black Eagle happily flying around. We continued our journey and, after a while, I stepped out of the car to breathe in the crisp cold air. While I took in the clean air, I tried to brush away the dust from my jacket and realised with wonder that it was a snowflake. I regaled in nature’s quiet beauty.

The Sach Pass is the gateway to the Pangi Valley, which is a verdant and narrow valley in the Udaipur district. The Chandrabhaga River that flows through this valley is, unlike most of Himachal’s rivers, unfettered. The pale blue river gurgles with glee as it flows over the boulders.

It took us an entire day’s drive to cover the 65 kms from Bairagarh to Killar, which is the first town after the pass and also has a scenic PWD guest house. Unfortunately, this guest house had been fully booked by the entourage of a visiting government official. So we backtracked to a fork and took the prong going towards Kashmir via Kishtwar. 10 kms down this road is a little village called Dharwas where again we were told that the guest house is full. Fortunately, the chowkidar was a kind-hearted man who let us pitch our tents on the manicured lawn of the bungalow.

When I laid my thin sleeping bag out in the open, I anticipated an uncomfortable night. But even though the temperatures fell to about 3°C that night, I had a comfortable night’s sleep.

Transcending material pleasures

The next morning over tea, the chowkidar casually mentioned to us that there was an incredibly narrow and scary road across a cliff, about 15 kms ahead from where we were. Even before he could finish his sentence, the four of us got into the car to explore this road. As we crossed into the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the apprehension on the face of the border guard was obvious. He didn’t seem too keen on the idea of city dwellers wanting to drive on that road. His fears were not unfounded; I have to confess I had never driven on a scarier road. It is narrow with sheer drops and a forbidding overhang. It feels as if the rock-face has grudgingly yielded a barely drivable path. This beautiful road, with the river on one side and the silvery green trees on the other, with its 1000 foot vertical drop and huge mountains made me feel insignificant yet incredibly alive. The view was so exquisite that we decide to brew some masala chai right there. As we sipped our tea, we also drank in the serenity of the place.

We then had to drive 12 kms further down that road to find a place where we had enough of space to turn the car around.

On our last night, we camped at the beautiful Miyan Valley that is an offshoot of the Pangi Valley. Kartik made some delicious biryani for us at our campsite by the Miyan River. Even though he cooked it on a portable propane stove and used a large amount of guesswork to measure the ingredients, it was as sumptuous as something you’d get at a five-star kitchen.

My trip to Pangi Valley taught me lessons about how I could live my life in the city. For the locals there, a landslide is just a minor inconvenience. They don’t fret or fume but patiently wait as the road is being cleared. Getting no electricity for days is not a problem, nor is the delay in getting a gas cylinder. Life in Pangi Valley goes on beautifully without the material comforts we have, and it is in fact richer and not short-changed. Today, as I sit in the sweltering heat of Mumbai and reminisce about my trip, I invariably go back to that moment sitting by the rushing river, eating that delicious biryani by the light of fireflies buzzing about camp. Bliss indeed!

This was first published in the November 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post Jumping lanes in Pangi Valley appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

We work to occupy time. We work to establish our place in the pecking order, to guarantee status and prestige. And, too often, we work because we simply don’t know what else to do with ourselves, because we think we must and should.

Love it or hate it, work sets the pace and establishes the rhythm for everything else we do in life. Even when we‘re not at work, when we’re not on the clock, we consume time by constantly doing things and staying busy. Weekends are whirlwinds of activity. Vacations often resemble a blitzkrieg of organized movement with every moment of the trip preplanned and orchestrated for maximum efficiency and, of course, pleasure! For example—“Twenty-one countries in 14 days: Airfare, ground transportation, guides, lodging, meals, wine but not cocktails, and all tips included!”

James Gleick, in Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, reflects on why Americans [and, increasingly, the world] work and play as hard and intensely as they do.

Gleick suggests that we are now manic about speed. The world now seems to operate on five-minute intervals. We are rush freaks. We are time obsessed. “Lose not a minute” is the motto of the age. We are always making haste. Multitasking isn’t an option, it’s a way of life. Hyperactivity is the norm.

It has simply become standard to respond to the conventional salutation of “Hello, how are you?” with some version of the refrain “I am so busy!” Unfortunately, we say this to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy and our ability to keep going a mark of real character. As theologian Wayne Muller has pointed out: “The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others.” Sadly, to be busy, to be unavailable, has become the model of the successful life.

Here’s the problem. When life becomes an Olympic endurance event [“the Everydayathon”], when the stopwatch is always ticking, when are we supposed to have fun? When will there be a time to be human? As Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, professor of leisure studies, so aptly put it, “Having to go so fast to keep up, we miss stuff—our existence is truncated. Some things simply cannot be done going full speed: love, sex, conversation, food, family, friends, nature. In the whirl, we are less capable of appreciation, enjoyment, sustained concentration, sorrow, memory.”

I think, we all do too much or try to do too much. My mother used to accuse me of having “eyes bigger than your stomach.” She told me that I both literally and figuratively put too many things on my plate. “Alfredó,” she’d say, “You do too much. Slow down, take smaller bites, or you’re not going to enjoy anything. “Piano, piano arrive sano!” [Slowly, slowly, and you’ll get there surely, safely!]

My thesis is a simple one. Even if we love our jobs and find creativity, success, and pleasure in our work, we also crave, desire, and need not to work. No matter what we do to earn a living, we all seek the benefits of leisure, lassitude, and inertia. We all need to play more in our lives.

The urgent importance of leisure

According to the Harvard Health Letter, leisure time has dramatically eroded in recent decades, down to approximately 16.5 hours, per person, per week. A recent surgeon general’s report declared that the lack of “leisure-time physical activity” has become a serious health threat. The most hazardous work-related illness says Joe Robinson, editor of a vacation magazine, is “vacation deficit disorder” or “vacation starvation.” Robinson and the surgeon general are not alone in their warnings regarding the lack of leisure and vacation time and potential health issues. A fourteen-year study of 12,866 men published in The Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine found that annual vacations sharply reduced the risk of death in middle- aged men.

Similarly, a twenty-year study of 749 middle-aged women by the Centers for Disease Control found a direct link between a lack of vacations and a higher risk of heart attack and death. At the University of Essex, England, researchers found a link in women between working more than 48 hours a week for more than three years and high blood pressure, as well as ailments of the arms, legs, and hands.

Finally, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health claims that demanding jobs that give employees little control over their work increase the risk of heart disease.

Conclusion: “Vacations may be good for your health.”

Albert Speer, Third Reich minister of technology and armaments, argues in his memoir, Spandau, that intentions and ideology aside, Hitler’s chief failings as a military leader were overextension, overexertion, and fatigue. Hitler, said Speer, especially when the war began to turn against Germany, never seriously rested or recreated or could find any downtime, away time from the all-consuming particulars of the war. He took on too much, said Speer, and micromanaged too much. He got lost in the details, and his fatigue often blinded him to the obvious logic of the situation.

Fatigue and the frenzy of overstimulation can block objectivity, delimit perspective, and often deaden our ability to calculate and evaluate logically. Vince Lombardi, NFL coach and football legend, is reported to have said that “fatigue makes cowards and fools of us all and more often than not results in mediocrity.” Another American legend, Gary Cooper, in a less than-legendary 1953 film, Seminole, perhaps put it most succinctly: “Never decide or do anything when you’re tired.”

As the reclusive philosopher Baruch Spinoza suggested, in order to gain perspective, we need to step back; insight and wisdom are very often best achieved in moments away from the task at hand.

Even when you love the job you’re doing, you can’t do it all the time without losing something. To do almost anything well, you must have time off from it. Time away from constantly doing it. Time to recover and relax. Time to do something else. Time to just forget about it.

All of us need to “vacate” ourselves from our jobs and the wear and tear of the “everydayness” of our lives. All of us need to get absorbed in, focused on, something of interest outside of ourselves. All of us need escape, if only for a while, to retain our perspective on who we are and who we don’t want to be. All of us need to gain some feeling for, some knowledge of, the differences between distraction and insight, merriment and meaning, entertainment and recreation, laziness and leisure, rest and inertia.

If we are what we do, then to a great extent, as adults, we are defined by our work and our play. Both of these basic patterns of behavior influence not only how we define ourselves but how we understand and interpret reality and how we make ethical choices about our lives and our interactions with others. Therefore, depending upon who we want to be, and how we want to be known, we must be careful in our choices of what we do for a living and how we choose to play.

All of us need to vacate ourselves from our jobs and the wear and tear of the everydayness of our lives

Vacation on wheels

In Latin the word for vacation is vacare, “to be empty, nonoccupied,” “to suspend activity,” “to do nothing.” Work represents the everyday routine, and vacations are temporary interruptions.

On vacations we turn aside, go in the opposite direction, vacate ourselves from our usual course or purpose. Vacations connote downtime, choice, freedom, personal discretion, and activities an individual engages in for his or her own purposes and pleasures. Vacations are seen as an antidote to work. They are medicine, a remedy for counteracting the effects of labor. The psychologist Wayne E Oates believes that vacations offer us an opportunity to “empty ourselves of our multiple roles in life.” Vacations allow us to be away from the job, to change the patterns of our day, to alter our routine, to reconfigure our actions and habits, to rediscover ourselves.

Although it is not true for everyone, we commonly associate vacations or vacationing with traveling. In traveling, we take ourselves outside of ourselves, our normal life, our usual patterns. So where do we all go when we go on our private or familial odysseys? Not so surprisingly, an awful lot of us are pretty pedestrian in the use of our vacation time. It has been my experience that if you randomly survey a hundred people about how they spend their vacations the answers you will get are not scientific, and not always exactly the same, but they conform to a strikingly consistent pattern. Ten percent will gleefully report about doing something incredibly exotic: flying to Cape Town, South Africa, to go cage diving with great white sharks; sixteen days trekking through Tanzania; or a rafting trip down the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. Another 10 per cent will report that they did nothing on their vacation. That is, due to lack of interest or lack of funds, instead of taking an exotic trip, they did some chores around the house, took a trip to the zoo, took in a few museums, and spent a long day and night at their closest Six Flags amusement park.

About 40 per cent of those polled will tell you that they had a wonderful time on their vacations even if their destinations of choice were not sites “where no man has ever gone before.” These are the people who try to make it to Europe every third year. These are the hard-core vacationers and tourists who make detailed plans and carefully manage their budgets so that they can take an annual vacation.

And then there’s the surprising 40 per cent of us who report visiting family and friends on their vacations. Going to see loved ones has historically always been a major reason for traveling. And now, given the fluidity of our lives, our mobility, our multiple job changes, more and more of us live away from our families and our friends because they are scattered about everywhere. So naturally, our vacation time may be the only opportunity we have to get together.

Going to see grandma and grandpa, or spending a week with your brother or best friend from college, does not, of course, mean you do nothing else but spend time with them. Visitors usually end up doing a lot of the stuff that tourists usually do—dinners out, shopping, a little sightseeing. The main problem that was reported to me by a number of people who regularly take “family-visit vacations” is what one of them called “vacation- interruptus” or “vacationincompletus!”

That is, going to see family and friends is a vacation of sorts—you’re someplace else, you’re doing things, you’re having fun—but you’re constantly trying to balance your wants and desires with those of others. Because of all this and the sheer numbers involved in the project, the first casualty is usually the possibility of anything resembling “spontaneity” or “adventure.”

Moreover, the concepts of silence, solitude, and rest rarely enter into the equation.

Putting aside my limited survey, I have also found a growing number of people for whom vacations are anything but pedestrian. The past few decades have seen the rise of adventure travel, ecotravel, and archaeological travel, and now there are vacations that “take you to the limit”—extreme sports vacations.

What defines an extreme sport? While there is no exact definition, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that all of them have an above-average propensity to result in death, injury, or maiming. Here are just a few examples: rock climbing, bungee jumping, white-water rafting, base jumping [B-A-S-E, an acronym for parachutists jumping off buildings, antennas, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs)], bridge swinging, street luge, downhill roller blading, surfing in typhoonlike swells, skiing/snowboarding in avalanche country, and aerobatic parachuting.

Although extreme sports can be a local weekend activity [e.g. parachuting], many of them require time and travel [mountain climbing, skiing] and therefore, most extreme sport athletes dedicate their vacation time to their sport of choice.

Extreme sports is about pushing boundaries, taking risks, leaving safety behind to leap into the void. Extreme sports is about a radical rush of adrenaline. It’s about forgetting about standards of safety. It’s about not being cerebral. It’s about not having control over the elements. It’s not about winning, it’s about not losing, not dying. It’s about elevating risk to the extreme. It’s about living through the experience. Simply, it’s about the afterglow pleasure of survival. Clearly, extreme sports vacations are not for the faint of heart.

I do understand why so many of us are drawn to it: it’s a combination of the thrill of the unknown, novelty, dancing with danger, and the irresistible possibility of the joy of play—no matter what the downside. We are, after all, curious creatures and thrill seekers. According to Eric Perlman, a mountaineer and filmmaker specializing in extreme sports: “Every human being with two legs, two arms is sometime going to wonder how fast, how strong, how enduring he or she is. We are designed to experiment or die.”

My problem is not with what we do on vacations, or where we go on vacations, or how much we spend on vacations. My problem revolves around the issue of what most of us don’t get out of our vacations—the opportunity for solitude. We just don’t do nothing well!

Weekends: Thank God it’s Monday

A few of us, who are really good or just plain lucky in our financial and vocational choices, get to take the whole summer off. Some of us, with sufficient seniority, get a month. Most of us have the standard—but by no means guaranteed—two weeks off a year. Many of us make due with the occasional “four-day-quickie.” And a lot of us take our vacations or what leisure we can find on the weekends—if there is a weekend that week!

It’s been my experience that weekends in most family households are anything but leisurely or restful. In fact, I would suggest that the management of weekends in most “double-income with some kids households” [DISKS] can best be characterized as an experiment in controlled chaos.

Think about it, although you don’t have to go into “the job,” Saturdays are usually just another workday. A “honey-do list” is drawn up, chores are assigned, and you’re both off and running. Take the dog to the vet. Drop off Carla at ballet classes and Jason at little league practice. Pick up the dry cleaning. Stop at the hardware store. Vacuum and dust. Get Carla and Jason, bring them to swimming classes.

Go grocery shopping. Pick up kids again. Take Carla to the mall, drop off Jason at the cineplex. Get the dog. Do a load of wash. Start the sauce for dinner. Get the kids. Finish making dinner. Have dinner. Clean up after dinner. Drop off the kids at friends. Pick up two videos “not suitable” for family viewing. Fall asleep halfway through the first one. Totally forget to pick up the kids until they call looking for you.

And then there’s Sunday [You know the routine. Fill in the blanks as you deem necessary.] Church…lawn and yardwork …Little League game…wash the car…clean out the garage …have dinner with the in-laws…check the kids’ homework …check e-mail for work Monday…and—in the words of the late Sonny and the ever-rejuvenate Cher—”the beat goes on.”

Pop critics and commentators on the workplace keep telling us that the song that best reflects workers’ attitudes about the job is “Thank God It’s Friday” sung in celebration of the end of the week. That well may be so, but after a long weekend of kit, kin, and chores, there are a lot of people singing a slightly different tune—“Thank God It’s Monday!”—in celebration of the end, finally, of the weekend!

Although you don’t have to go into the job, Saturdays are usually just another workday

According to philosophers, pundits, pollsters, and politicians alike, weekends ideally are about freedom. The freedom to let go and let be. The freedom to explore your life, your world, and yourself. The freedom to stop, look, and listen. The freedom to examine an idea, pursue a dream. The freedom to think hard, to be serious, to ponder great ideas. The freedom to be a dilettante. The freedom to be whimsical, play hard, have fun. The freedom to be open to newness or nothing at all. In fact, practically speaking, we spend our weekends in a variety of different ways depending on who we are, what we do, where and how we live, and how much we make and can afford to spend. For most of us, the weekends are usually a mixed bag of relatively mild and pedestrian activities and experiences.

They usually start with the simple pleasure of sleeping in. [Which means, if you are over the age of forty, waking up at the usual workday time but forcing yourself to stay in bed until the deliciously decadent time of 7:15 A.M.!] Weekends mean being able to linger over breakfast, coffee, and the paper. They include a few [if you are lucky] household chores and repairs, as well as a little shopping. Weekends mean a walk, a run, a workout. Taking kids to the zoo. Watching a game. Playing catch in the backyard. Weekends mean turning off the phone, never getting out of your bathrobe, and watching the Sunday TV. Weekends mean breaking up the patterns of the week. Weekends are about going out for lunch or dinner, and maybe taking in a film.

For too many of us, concludes Witold Rybczynski in Waiting For the Weekend, weekends represent a different and sometimes a more pleasant way of staying busy and consuming time. But, he says, genuine free time, real leisure, must remain just that: “Free of the encumbrance of convention, free of the need for busyness, free for the ‘noble habit of doing nothing.’ And clearly, “doing nothing” does not describe the modern weekend!

Genuine leisure is what you need

Because too many of us live in a world of total work, we think that leisure is at least minimally achieved by the mere absence of work. Because we are so eager to escape the burdens of work, we think that any form of nonwork—quiet time, downtime, doing no-thing in regard to a job time—constitutes some form of rest, recreation, and/or leisure. Well, we’re wrong. To be idle, to be without a task, to be doing no-thing are prerequisites but not sufficient conditions for the achievement of genuine leisure.

According to the psychiatrist Leonard Fagin, the concept of control is the crucial psychological distinction between work and leisure. What characterizes leisure is the feeling, if not the reality, of greater control over one’s activity; leisure implies doing what one wants to do with one’s “free” or “non-work time.”

Englishman, Winston Churchill, had a few eccentric passions. Churchill was both an accomplished painter [on canvas, not walls] and a bricklayer. At Chartwell, his rural estate, he built two cottages, a playhouse, and several walls. Both Churchill and Fagin were convinced that leisure meant time free of the encumbrance of convention, free from “business-busyness,” free of the constraints of social obligation and duty.

Josef Pieper, in his cult classic Leisure: The Basis of Culture, argues that leisure is a necessary condition for both individual and communal survival, growth, and progress.

For Pieper, leisure is not simply a form of recreation or diversion, nor is it the natural result of rest, relaxation, or amusement. Although, it is necessary to be free of the toil and moil of the everyday burdens of work for it to occur, according to Pieper leisure is primarily a mental set, a psychological orientation, a condition of one’s soul or spirit. For Pieper, leisure is an attitude of nonactivity, of not being busy, of inner calm, a commitment to silence, meditation, observation, and letting things be. Leisure is a way of life and not just the inevitable by-product of holidays, spare time, weekends, or a vacation.

Leisure is a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality…For leisure is a receptive attitude of the mind, a contemplative attitude…

Leisure, like contemplation, is of a higher order than the vita active [active life]…It is only in and through leisure that the “gate of freedom” is opened and man can escape from the closed circle of that “latent dread and anxiety”…the mark of the world of work.

To be leisurely, said Josef Pieper, is a choice. To be leisurely is to be disengaged from the tedium of tasks—to be open, observant, and receptive to issues outside of self and one’s immediate needs. Leisure is time given to contemplation, wonder, awe, and the development of ideas. Leisure is about creativity, insight, unregulated thoughts. It is about intellectual activity, but not intellectual work or utilitarian problem solving. It is about desire, wonder, and unbridled curiosity.

But we just don’t do leisure well. We rarely deliberately devote ourselves to idleness. Although I know it sounds like a Zen paradox, we almost never slow down enough to experience the experience of not doing anything at all. We rarely attune our inner ear to the needs of our inner self. We usually stay too busy, we usually do too much, and in the doing insulate ourselves from ourselves. As a friend once told me: “Most of us will take time off, but very few of us want to spend time with only ourselves. It’s too boring and scary. It’s a lot easier to do something and just keep busy.”

We just don’t do leisure well. We rarely deliberately devote ourselves to idleness

In an almost completely forgotten book [who’s got the leisure to read anymore?], Solitude: A Return to the Self, the English psychiatrist Anthony Storr speaks to a profoundly neglected human need: the need for solitude. The Random House Dictionary defines solitude as “the state of being or living alone.” Although optimum solitude can occur only in the physical absence of others, the general state of solitude can be achieved in the presence of others. Just as it is possible to be lonely in the company of others, it is also possible to achieve solitude, of a kind, in the company of others.

The state of solitude is about calmness, centeredness, and focus. It’s the ability to get “lost in the present.” It’s about being able to rivet our attention, getting in touch with our deepest thoughts and feelings. It’s about being able to ruminate without distraction, to meditate, to idly muse, to become totally absorbed in thought.

Of course, a lonely mountaintop is always preferable, but solitude can be had about anywhere.

Achieving solitude is easier said than done. As William James pointed out, reality is a “booming, buzzing, confusion.” The excessive busyness of our multitasked lives and the constant overload of outside stimuli are much more conducive to the production of migraines than to the pursuit of meaning.

Nevertheless, suggests Storr, “finding down-time,” “time outside of usual time,” “time to reflect on time,” is a sine qua non condition for emotional and intellectual stability.

Parting shot

It is my hope that we will learn or relearn two complementary and fundamental truths regarding the human situation. [1] Adults need work in the same way that children need play in order to fulfill themselves as persons. [2] Adults need play in the same way that children need play in order to fulfill themselves as persons. An overworked man is an unimaginative one, at best dully completing a routine, at worst making serious mistakes. Far from benefiting his company, he is very likely creating problems rather than solving them—and so making work for other overworked men to boast about. We get new ideas when our mind is allowed to roam in a free and relaxed way around a problem—and for that we need a reasonable amount of leisure and thus a decent annual vacation.

Maybe the European practice of five weeks paid vacation goes too far—but not by much! [John Sullivan, columnist, Chicago Sun-Times, January 1, 2002]

The ability to play, to go on vacation, to take long walks, to have a quiet weekend, to have time to think, should not be perceived as a perk or privilege. We need not always be doing. In fact, we must all try to studiously do less, in order to be more.

P.S. To maintain sanctity of the source, this article follows American English.
Excerpted with permission from The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacations by Al Gini; published by Routledge.

The post The Urgent Importance of Leisure appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Summer time

As summer rolls by from distant shores, the serene languid stretches of sand can almost lull you into hypnotic submission. Humid air tingled with salt spray is gently whisked away in cool teases of the sea breeze.

You can laze, and laze—and then laze some more as you discover your idyllic strip of sand, sun and shade on the many beaches that dot Goa. Look up at the palm fringes encircling the powder puff blue sky, and take in the faint, lingering aroma of the succulent spices of fresh pomfret being readied to fry. Bliss.

You’ll give in to musings on life, watching the clouds trace wispy patterns in the sky as the sun journeys lazily across the horizon. Filled with Goan rice and fish curry cooked fresh in the shacks on the beach, your eyelids succumb to a deep slumber. And you have already reached heaven.

Goa in summer is all about crisp whites, soft blues, gentle breezes, laid back musings, much meandering, and endless siestas.

For, life is to be lived without a goal in Goa. Especially in the summers.

The time, if something like that exists in this leisurely land, is taken up by strolls, swims, sleep, serendipity and the sanguine spray of the sea that clings to your hair and seeps into your system.

The long, winding road segues to a lazy rhythm as coconut palms, quaint houses, beaming people and wide open spaces rush past and a feeling of ecstatic freedom settles. Being India’s smallest state and the fourth smallest in terms of population, Goa is really about giving you your space [literally and figuratively as well]. You carry your being lightly in this land that is home to world heritage architecture, Portuguese influences, coconuts and cashew nuts, and miles of beaches.

Reclusive, refreshing rains

At the beginning of June, the sun suddenly hides behind the grey clouds that come in from over the sea. And Goa gets transformed into a misty romantic vision. Sometimes, the skies open up and bless the land with continuous days of downpour. The greens become deeper, more lush, the sea churns up its most gigantic waves and the smell of wet earth lingers in the air. Goa in the rains is like a shy new beautiful bride, with veils of rain cascading and hiding her behind the thin veneer of mist. It’s a season of togetherness. It’s a time when the original beauty of the place, shorn of high season tourist revelry, is revealed in all its magic. These are moments when the land reigns, letting out its old-world beauty with a flourish, cocooning the visitors with bursts of rains.

To experience the ageless charm of Goa, head to the South, which is soaked in the genteel ways, with prime luxury hotels treating you to the unhurried elegant Goan ethos. Here, on their sprawling properties, the monsoons in Goa present their most spectacular performances. That too at an off season discount!

Actually, much of manmade Goa crouches out of reach as the rains hurtle across the skies. Shacks close. The beaches empty out of the typical tourist population. Restaurants operate sparingly. The fishermen venture out only occasionally. And this is when Goa really opens up in all its glory and vivacity. It blooms, it dances, it rejoices in its existence. And you will feel like being one with the land.

As you let go of umbrellas and raincoats and enjoy an impromptu rain dance on the beach, with each step your toes slide deeper into the wet sand. It feels so right. Enjoy the walks around deserted water sports enclaves and catch the crabs crawling out to test the land. See the flowers take on richer hues; the rain drops delicately settling in on their soft petals as the mist covers the path before you in a sudden swift rush.

Goa in the rains is deeply invigorating. Even as you sip your coffee at the hotel’s breakfast bar, and watch the rains, you are infused with a surge of energy. You feel rejuvenated and coaxed out of the summer slumber, refreshed and ready to go.

You also feel connected in profound ways, with nature. You witness how things work in sublime ways when you let nature take its course. Your senses feel heightened, your mind refreshed and your heart does a strange flip flop every time the rain comes calling. Goa allows you to stand back—and participate in nature’s revelry—all at the same time.

Of course, rains in Goa are absolutely romantic. Even the hard core rationalist will be hard pressed to resist the allure and the misty environs. It is an ideal backdrop to patch up with someone whom you’ve had a tiff with. All will be forgiven in the endearing climate that the monsoons spin around the Mandovi river, the broken forts and the timeless churches.

Wow, it’s winter

The churches stand poised in resplendence as the winter draws near somewhere in November in preparation for Christmas that is the joi de vivre of Goa. Flocks of tourists, many from international shores, make Goa the meeting and melting pot of cultures, cuisines and camaraderie in December. It’s the season of bonhomie. Of reckless abandon and frothy cheer. This is Goa in festivity, in celebration and a non-stop partying mode. The lights are all over the place, on the beaches as well, as bonfires and barbecues highlight the late evenings.

The natives get out of their laidback gear and lifestyle [sosegaad to the locals] of vests and shorts and look like completely different people in their suits and bow ties. The ladies fuss over their sorpotels and bebincas and their pork vindaloos and the fragrances of spices and meat and laughter pervade the bylanes of Goa as Christmas trees go up in the porches. You feel welcome, wanted—as if you’ve lived in Goa all along.

The music throbs on the cold breeze that wafts from the seashore, and strangers become friends in the spirit of the moment. You feel the magic in the air as the gracious, warm and enchanting essence of Christmas completely takes over, changing the character of Goa yet again.

The weather is pitched to be able to make the most of the outdoors all day long [and all night long if you wish] and the vibe is infectious. During Christmas, Goa has an unmistakable buzz about it, a zest for celebrating life itself. It feels like a massive carnival has taken over the streets, beaches and churches. This is no longer the place to amble along, but to let your hair down. No more the quiet space but a throbbing, heady, energy-driven zone.

The months from November to February are decidedly edgy, and gloriously merry. The restaurants whip up their most delectable dishes, made-to-order as you want them—traditional and roasted delicacies and desserts laden with coconut and dollops of Goan cheer. Goa, as a tourist guide told me with a wink, has the most tipple joints per square kilometre.

For you, the year around

Irrespective of the season, Goa brings out aspects of yourself that you have lost touch with—helping you get in touch with yourself at fundamental levels. While in Goa, an energetic freedom permeates every pore of your being. It, unequivocally, brings out the best in you. Because, Goa, simply is all about finding—and losing yourself—in all the seasons.

This was first published in the November 2011 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post On holiday 365 days a year appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.