Everyone around me is planning some kind of a vacation or the other. Jungle safaris, hill getaways, overseas hotspots. And here I am, with no active plans for the foreseeable future, wondering when the hell I can get out of the city and take a break from the hateful hotness of Delhi. Naturally, I'm a winter girl all the way down to my wonderfully colourful wollen legwarmers. But for now, I'm still figuring out when I can sneak a day or two out from my work sched and race to the hills.
My friends and colleagues tell me I shouldn't be complaining because I took time off in April. As true as that is, I'm such a fan of extended weekends. I'm daydreaming about sure and unsure travel plans all too often - it gives me a pretty unparalleled high, directly proportionate to how bummed out I get when it's about to end and I know I've got to wake up the next day and get back into mundane routine. I get grumpy, very grumpy.
I blame my parents. You see, when we were kids, my sister and I, we barely spent a holiday at home. My parents were forever in overdrive over where to vacation, and which tiny part of unseen India we didn't yet have in our photo album. By the time I got to middle school, I think we had covered 3/4 of India and about 1/4 of the world, which really, was a lot of the time. We'd done every kind of safari imaginable and seen more monuments than I could remember. We'd covered much of the coast, danced around snowflakes, taken boat rides on numerous rivers. We'd scaled the Eiffel Tower and covered that funny bird park in Singapore. We'd seen more museums around the world than I can count. I had a cupboard full of holiday diaries my father made sure I wrote, and boy, am I glad he forced me to jot stuff down. I get pretty tickled when I revisit those diaries, chuckling away at notes I know I always wrote in a hurry, wishing I didn't have to write them at all. I should remember to thank my father for getting my lazy ass down to making those seemingly insignificant but oh-so deliciously memorable notes.
But hey, I'm not 13 anymore (Does the font make me seem like I am? Can't help it - it's too darn cute to not use). I'm also not so big on the non-stop sightseeing bit anymore. What my parents did not pass on to me was their unending energy when it comes to getting up and about, while on holiday. My mother, actually, has always been absolutely the model traveler, getting the best out of any vacation, soaking in every possible moment a destination might have to offer.
Umm, I'm really not that enterprising. Out of India, yes, I mean you gotta get your money's worth, right? But on home ground, I like to take it easy. You see, I've obviously fallen in that typical city-bumpkin habit of wanting to only reeeeeeelax during any vacation. I'm all about late, terribly long breakfasts, reading, sleeping, reading, taking a walk around the resort, spa-ing and then getting down to lovely, long dinners. I took that view a bit too far when recently we were all at the friendly family resort in Ooty, soaking in the lovely sun and cool breeze. My mother voted for more driving about in and around Ooty than I had signed up for. So there I was, disrupting a perfectly nice family vacation with my loud views. The husband, the father, the sister, cousin and granny were kind of squashed in between. I really should have kept quiet. Hell, I need to start being less of a party pooper!
But seriously, all's well that ends well. My enthusiastic mother learnt quickly not to take my grumbling too seriously, and that as long as I get my spa and sleep time, I'm not such a bad fellow traveller :)
My friends and colleagues tell me I shouldn't be complaining because I took time off in April. As true as that is, I'm such a fan of extended weekends. I'm daydreaming about sure and unsure travel plans all too often - it gives me a pretty unparalleled high, directly proportionate to how bummed out I get when it's about to end and I know I've got to wake up the next day and get back into mundane routine. I get grumpy, very grumpy.
I blame my parents. You see, when we were kids, my sister and I, we barely spent a holiday at home. My parents were forever in overdrive over where to vacation, and which tiny part of unseen India we didn't yet have in our photo album. By the time I got to middle school, I think we had covered 3/4 of India and about 1/4 of the world, which really, was a lot of the time. We'd done every kind of safari imaginable and seen more monuments than I could remember. We'd covered much of the coast, danced around snowflakes, taken boat rides on numerous rivers. We'd scaled the Eiffel Tower and covered that funny bird park in Singapore. We'd seen more museums around the world than I can count. I had a cupboard full of holiday diaries my father made sure I wrote, and boy, am I glad he forced me to jot stuff down. I get pretty tickled when I revisit those diaries, chuckling away at notes I know I always wrote in a hurry, wishing I didn't have to write them at all. I should remember to thank my father for getting my lazy ass down to making those seemingly insignificant but oh-so deliciously memorable notes.
But hey, I'm not 13 anymore (Does the font make me seem like I am? Can't help it - it's too darn cute to not use). I'm also not so big on the non-stop sightseeing bit anymore. What my parents did not pass on to me was their unending energy when it comes to getting up and about, while on holiday. My mother, actually, has always been absolutely the model traveler, getting the best out of any vacation, soaking in every possible moment a destination might have to offer.
Umm, I'm really not that enterprising. Out of India, yes, I mean you gotta get your money's worth, right? But on home ground, I like to take it easy. You see, I've obviously fallen in that typical city-bumpkin habit of wanting to only reeeeeeelax during any vacation. I'm all about late, terribly long breakfasts, reading, sleeping, reading, taking a walk around the resort, spa-ing and then getting down to lovely, long dinners. I took that view a bit too far when recently we were all at the friendly family resort in Ooty, soaking in the lovely sun and cool breeze. My mother voted for more driving about in and around Ooty than I had signed up for. So there I was, disrupting a perfectly nice family vacation with my loud views. The husband, the father, the sister, cousin and granny were kind of squashed in between. I really should have kept quiet. Hell, I need to start being less of a party pooper!
But seriously, all's well that ends well. My enthusiastic mother learnt quickly not to take my grumbling too seriously, and that as long as I get my spa and sleep time, I'm not such a bad fellow traveller :)
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