Insta vacations

 Going on holiday now means creating content for your social media feeds

We are quickly approaching that time of year when my Instagram feed gets overwhelmed by posts and stories about other people’s holidays. There they are on the beach, sunning themselves while sipping on a cocktail. There they are in the mountains, enjoying a cup of hot chocolate by a roaring fire. There they are trekking up a hill; skiing down a slope; taking cooking lessons; trying their hands at fishing, abseiling, skydiving, and more. The images come thick and fast and by the time I have scrolled through them all, I can’t help but feel a bit exhausted by this sensory overload.

 

Of course, I am guilty of the same sort of stuff when I head off on vacation. Rare is the breakfast that doesn’t get photographed; no sunset ever goes unrecorded; and I tend to overdo the selfies with my husband whenever we find ourselves in a beautiful location. But last week as I began to pack as we headed out on a trip, I couldn’t help but marvel at how Instagram has changed how we holiday (and by we, I mean all of us).

 

There was a time when we were bombarded with advice on how we should travel light. Pack a pair of jeans, some T-shirts, a dress for the evening, one pair of sandals, and some scarves to tart everything up and you’re good to go. That advice seems almost laughable now that Insta demands that we wear a different fabulous outfit every day (and night) so that we can chronicle our fashion choices. And it’s not just clothes. You also must have the perfect accessories: funky shoes and belts; statement necklaces; quirky hats; stylish sunglasses (and yes, you must have more than one of each!) so that you can show off the variety of looks that you can pull off.

 

Then, there is the choice of destination, which is increasingly dictated by where other people are vacationing on Instagram. During the pandemic, Maldives became a popular destination because every ‘travel influencer’ (read Bollywood starlet) was posing in a bikini frolicking in an infinity pool or lounging on a sandbank on one of its many islands. Since then, Croatia has become a popular draw, as have such smaller Italian cities as Siena and Bergamo. And once you are there at these Insta-friendly destinations, it has become de rigueur to pose at certain popular locations so that you can recreate the pictures that your mates posted a few weeks earlier. 

 

There was a time when heading out on vacation meant creating memories that would last you a lifetime. Now, going on holiday means creating photo-opportunities that will live on in your social media forever (and garner the maximum number of likes). The days when your holiday pix were just inflicted on immediate family and close friends are over. Now you can broadcast them to the whole world, looking for validation from strangers on the Internet. 

 

Is that necessarily A Bad Thing, I hear you say. Well, if you ask me, this Insta-obsession is fast taking the spontaneity and fun out of our holidays and making them yet another chore as we try and increase our social media clout rather than focus on just having a good time. And I, for one, am going to try and wean myself off.

Taking a break?

Travel the world if you want to; but don’t knock the humble ‘family holiday’

Chances are that you are reading this either while planning a holiday, enjoying a break, or recovering from the rigours of a family vacation. Yes, this is the holiday season, when everyone who can afford it gets away from the heat as fast as they possibly can.

And these days we are all spoilt for choice, aren’t we? We can hit the beaches of Goa or Koh Samui, depending on our budget. We can enjoy the mountain air in Manali, Shimla or even Switzerland, if our money stretches that far. We can trek in Nepal; go shopping in Dubai; watch plays in London; golf in Scotland; sample the best of Renaissance art in Italy; indulge in a bit of wine-tasting in France or the Napa Valley; gorge – or gag, it depends entirely on you – on authentic Chinese fare in Shanghai or Beijing.

As far as holidays are concerned, the sky (and of course, our bank balance) is the limit. And even then, there’s nothing we enjoy more than pushing the limits. A week spent river-rafting in the wilds of the South American jungle? Bring it on. A fortnight in the icy wilderness of Greenland getting in touch with our inner Innuit? Why ever not? Walking up the slopes of active volcanoes in New Zealand? Count us in.

These days, everyone wants to push the envelope when it comes to holidays. It’s no longer enough to go tiger-watching in Ranthambore, Pench or Bandhavgarh. You have to go on a safari in Africa or better still, watch from the sidelines when the annual migration of wildebeest takes place in Kenya. Chilling out on the beaches of Kovalam is now passé. These days you must head out to Croatia, the new jewel of the Mediterranean. And Nainital and Darjeeling are now spoilt beyond belief; if you want to enjoy the mountains then Ladakh is where it’s at.

It sounds great doesn’t it? After all, who would pass up the opportunity to see the world in all its glory, sample the delights – both culinary and cultural – it has to offer, and explore every nook and cranny of our beautiful planet. If we live in a global village, then I guess it behoves us to get acquainted with all its secret gardens. And great fun it is too.

And yet, even as I scour the internet looking for the best deals on hotels and airline fares, there is a tiny little part of me that misses the good old days when holidays were more about family time and less about seeing the world. When we spent our vacations bonding with assorted uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews and a veritable army of cousins rather than discovering the delights of gelato or the finer points of bull-fighting. When taking a break didn’t necessarily involve breaking the bank.

Growing up, I spent all my school vacations visiting various members of our extended – and, to be honest, fairly extensive – family. The summers were invariably spent at my aunt’s tea garden in Assam. And the holiday started from the time we boarded the train from Sealdah station, me armed with a stack of Amar Chitra Kathas and my mother with a lot of patience. Snack-time came with every station we stopped at, with deep-fried samosas and pakoras being scoffed down with hot, milky tea drunk from terracotta bhands (yes, I know, it sounds a bit vulgar, but it just means a tea-cup).

The high point of the journey was the ferry transfer across the Brahmaputra, which put all those geography lessons in perspective. And then, there was the rickety jeep-ride to the tea garden itself, with us indefatigable kids singing loudly and I fear quite tunelessly in the back while the adults struggled to stay upright on those long and winding roads.

And then followed a few weeks of absolute bliss, when you never needed to do anything you didn’t want to. There were no mandatory early mornings to catch the sunrise on the beach; no traipsing around museums feigning interest in the Dutch masters and dinosaur models; no endless shopping trips for our moms to drag us on. Instead, my assorted cousins and I ran quite wild: going on long exploratory walks on the tea slopes; examining the wild life in the area (mostly frogs and leeches, if you must know); starting our own Enid Blyton-style Five Find-Outers gang; making friends with the kids in the local village; and generally, having a blast.

In the winters, we headed north to visit more uncles and aunts. It helped, of course, that my uncles were in the army and hence could host us in a different city every three years or so. Thus it was that we sampled the delights of Southern temples, splashed around on the rocky beaches of Visakhapatnam, explored a yet-unspoilt Bhutan, visited endless forts and palaces in Rajasthan and made ourselves at home in army messes all around the country. All of this, leavened with lots of inter-generation bonding, and much re-telling of old family lore.

Even today, when I have traversed every continent in my travels, it is those family holidays that evoke the most heart-felt memories. And it is the family bonds forged on those vacations that provide me with the most emotional sustenance.

So, in case you haven’t booked that mini-break in Bangkok just yet, you might want to examine the possibility of a family vacation. Your kids may balk at it now; but they may well thank you for it in the years to come.