Has it been a while since you gave up trying to plan a family vacation because of how painful it can get? But my learnings from all the trips I have travelled to so far
tell me that travelling with family can be quite magical. The memories you make
with your sibling on a train ride to the Lake District or with Mom on a walking tour
or with Dad while he flew off on his parachute for a jump – those are the memories
that keep you strong when the going gets tough. Read on as I reveal my secrets for a memorable family holiday.
I get it, organising such a magical trip can get
difficult. When you and your family members don’t really care
for where you are going or what you are doing during the vacation, it really
doesn’t matter how it is planned, as long as everyone gets some together time.
But when you are actually there, on the vacation, there are bound to be some
things that will not appeal to the parents – like chilling with music on the
beach at night, and some things will not appeal to the kids – like long drawn
brunches or sitting in the car for long hours on a drive.
Also, on a regular day while at home, everyone is out of home by morning, either
off to work or class or school and the only time the family really spends
together is during dinner at night. But on a holiday, you are with each other
24X7. Those slightly cute traits sure can get on your nerves on a 8-9 day
family holiday. So here are a few things I have learnt while planning and
organising a holiday with my family.
As a kid, holidays were mostly about sightseeing with family.
But now that the kids (me and my sister) are grown up, all four of us – Mom, Dad me and Yuktie (my
sister) have very different personalities and hence interests. While Mom, a
vegetarian, is a poet and is open to some amount of sightseeing, she will be
most happy shopping for souvenirs, or just sitting in the outdoors and relaxing in the fresh air.
Dad on
the other hand, will not stay still for a minute. He HAS to explore
everything there is to do in the place we are going to. He loves adventure
sports. He is a doctor and spends all his time travelling for medical camps
with ngos while in our home city. So while on a holiday he loves to combine
exploring the place, more seeing the outdoors on a cycle ride, paragliding, sky
diving... you get the drift. He also enjoys sampling local food but is a
vegetarian, so that is a rare combination to find especially when travelling
internationally.
Both my parents are just about experiencing the beauty of travelling, especially to international destinations. Both of them are just about getting to understand what is it that they like or not about a mountain or beach destination or things to do there.
Both my parents are just about experiencing the beauty of travelling, especially to international destinations. Both of them are just about getting to understand what is it that they like or not about a mountain or beach destination or things to do there.
Yuktie, a vegetarian
too wants to do everything, is a fitness fanatic, can’t decide between dieting
or gorging on Punjabi food, loves to relax and read a book, go for an art and
craft workshop and enjoys adrenaline pumping adventure sports. And then there’s
me – Diipti.
I like to go where my feet take me, I pick one or two things I definitely want to do at a destination and leave the rest to chance. Most of the time it works out beautifully while travelling solo. I like to soak in the vibe of the place combined with sampling local cuisine (the reason why I turn non vegetarian while travelling). I enjoy being in the outdoors, and love something as simple as a nature trail to a heart pumping trek/ rafting expedition too.
I like to go where my feet take me, I pick one or two things I definitely want to do at a destination and leave the rest to chance. Most of the time it works out beautifully while travelling solo. I like to soak in the vibe of the place combined with sampling local cuisine (the reason why I turn non vegetarian while travelling). I enjoy being in the outdoors, and love something as simple as a nature trail to a heart pumping trek/ rafting expedition too.
What kind of Food Does everyone Like?
This is often ignored and can cause a terrible set back to
the family holiday. Personally, when I travel solo I enjoy sampling EVERYTHING
local, be it vegetarian or non vegetarian, flavoured, spiced or raw. But while
travelling with family, it is VITAL to keep in mind what everyone likes to eat.
In my family’s case, everyone except me is a strict vegetarian. So we made sure
we ear marked vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Nusa Dua, Seminyak, Ubud, Kilimantan
and everywhere we planned to explore.
You know, I have met so many friends and travellers who tell
me they happily survived on bread and potatoes or cheese throughout their trip.
I don’t understand how they could have been happy throughout the trip on that
diet. After all, we are the food we eat! Especially with family, where Indian
parents need their dose of rice, chapattis and veggies, it is important to keep
in mind the right places to eat. Bali
was again a great option as there were a couple of Indian restaurants as well
as a couple of Vegan ones.
A few months before every family holiday, I make it a point
to tell everyone to read about the destination we are heading to and select at
least three activities they would like to do there. This helps plan the
itinerary such that everyone gets to do what they like and invariably at least
one of the three activities overlap with at least two people. This is vital as
doing this exercise determines everyone’s satisfaction of having done something
they like on a trip.
An experiment I tried
on a Family Holiday to London
To give you an example, a couple of years back on a family
holiday to London, I kept telling Mom to read up and select some things she may
want to do. She procrastinated and eventually just went along with Dad’s long
list of things to do in London. It was an experiment I tried to orient Mom and
Dad into travelling on their own internationally. The four of us spent the
first 3 days together after which the next four days spent doing what each of
us wanted to do. I went on to Lake District, Yuktie came along and Mom
accompanied Dad with his tours around London, Oxford, Manchester, etc. The result – he enjoyed exploring but she was
tired at the end of most days and did not enjoy the experience at all.
And then What finally
worked
So this time for our holiday to Bali, after the tickets
where booked, everyone invested a day or two each to figure out what it is they
would like to do there. The good thing about Bali is that there is a lot to do,
unlike most beach destinations, Bali also has a lot of temples, volcanic
mountains in the nearby vicinity, making it a really good option for families.
So after everyone got back with a good idea of where Bali was on the map and
what they would like to do there, we called a family meeting.
Mom first. She wanted to do:
2. drive
to Mt.Kintamani and Lake Batur, have a hot Indonesian chai (local speciality)
3. Shopping
for handicrafts and souvineers
Dad’s list:
1. Trek
to Lake Batur
2. All
the water sports at the beach
3. Try
local vegetarian food – Gado Gado (vegetable stew), Lac lac (green idli),
Engine (Sweet black rice)
There is so much more he wanted to
do (these three barely scratch the surface of his list!) But for ease of
planning these were the top three.
Yuktie’s list:
1. Textile
workshop at Threads of Life
2. Cycling/
ATV tour around rice paddies
3. Chill
at the beach with a book
4. Shopping
at Seminyak
Diipti’s List:
1. Learn
Surfing
So at the family meeting, we put
everyone’s list together along with a few must see must dos while in Bali and
automatically our 4 day holiday scheduled itself out.
Day 1: Arrive at noon, late lunch,
rest and relax at the hotel. Evening head out for sunset at Tanha Lot temple.
Day 2: Drive to Ubud, while Yuktie
attended her textile workshop in the morning, the three of us spent the time
exploring Monkey park and walking around Ubud Market. Around noon, we drove to
see the rice terraces and enjoyed a lovely lunch there. Post lunch we went on
further north to Kintamani and Lake Batur, had a fabulous of the crater and
lake while sipping a cuppa coffee and drive back in the evening to relax by the
beach for the rest of the evening.
Day 3: Dad went on for his
whirlwind water sports day trip, where he tried everything under the sun –
parasailing, jet skiing, sea walk exploring the corals, under water scooter
ride, etc. etc! While I wanted to learn
surfing, I was nursing a knee injury from a recent accident, so the three of us
relaxed and took a massage by the beach. Post lunch, the three of us drove down
to Seminyak for some shopping while we left dad at another beach for a few
hours of snorkeling and scuba. All four of us got back to enjoy the sunset by
the pool side later in the evening.
Day 4: We had a flight back at
noon, so we spent the morning relaxing at the beach, swimming, jet skiing, and
generally being beach bums.
Conclusion and Inference
I will share a detailed post about
this family holiday in Bali. It was terribly a terribly short one (only 4 days in Bali! You got to be kidding me. But the tickets were booked as a deal my my Dad and the genius that he is, he thought he could cover his long list in just four days and that was that!) But the idea of sharing this brief was to give you
a sample of what happens when everyone gets to do some things they love and
some things as a family. Everyone is that much more involved and at the same
time, everyone gets their own space. Keeping a few parameters in mind, in the
case of my family – vegetarian (preferably Indian food) Mom is looking forward to Spain next year and guess what, she is already on her intermediate level course at institute of hispania learning Spanish.
Now that's a huge improvement I'd say!
1 comment:
Absolutely right...various temperaments of all members makes it challenging to organise a perfect and happy vacation.
Post a Comment