Getaways and homestays

The best part of travel is when you are back home, rocking in your chair, and looking back on the highs and lows of your vacation.

Travel is myriad-faceted. Packing up and leaving behind your old baggage of your daily routine for the unknown is the best-known reason for travel. When we were kids, we used to wait for the summer vacation, which meant leaving school bags and homework to travel by train to Bombay, now Mumbai, where our dear aunt waited to welcome us. Oh, the romance of train travel! Just as movies meant potato chips and coke during the interval, journeys meant local snacks and any vicious-looking juice at roadside stations, served by wild-looking vendors who ran with the train to collect their money, with us kids anxiously participating in the race.

Lonavla of Khandala Ghats was a much anticipated stop where Maharashtrian ayees in colourful saris brought us rose apples and mulberry fruit in leaf cups for a few annas. Plane and motor car travel could never compete with the excitement of the dirt-covered maroon messiah carrying loads of human hope and desire in its chug-chug rhythm. Ah, all that was way back in the fifties!

Now that I am growing older, I no longer board a train to anywhere. Newly named trains tempt me, but ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’ A colossal regret indeed. But wait a second; don’t forget the world comes to us in other ways thanks to the TV and the laptop, not to speak of the popular newspaper. Virtual experiencing, yes, but nonetheless delightful, considering these old bones. Venice, Prague, Doodhsagar Falls—you name it. One can spend hours armchair-travelling to forget one’s boredom.

Recently, I heard the most delightful reason for getting away. This couple had gone on a road trip to the coastal region of the Western Ghats: Mangaluru, Moodbidri, Maravante, Murudeshwar, and Majali, which is a fishing village in Karwaar. There was also the thrill of climbing the Sadashivgadh, with the view of a sheer drop to the Arabian Sea, to the Bhavani temple on top, which Shivaji was rumoured to visit before going to battle. It was a mixed cup of joy and suffering.

Modern-day travel, with traffic pile-ups on highways and wild elephants and leopards crossing the road, made their toes curl with fear. One reads every morning of road accidents taking innocent lives, freak mishaps that set one’s nerves on edge. So it was with great relief that this middle-aged couple had returned intact after facing only minor challenges like stone-cold tea served at wayside dhabas and mosquito-ridden sleepless nights at home stays. All’s well that ends well, sighed the gentleman happily. The best part of travel, said the gentleman, is when you are back home, rocking in your chair, and looking back on the highs and lows of your vacation. Yes, it was nice—the drive through the forest and the freedom from your daily hang-ups—but the nicest thing is to be back home, safe and sound—well, er, to your daily routine.