The first thing that I do every December is to create my
travel goals for the next year; it helps me focus on the things I need to
prepare and the money I need to save for the vacations. At any cost, I make
sure I go for at least two vacations in a year, which may go up to four. It may
sound too ambitious for the uninitiated, but I also used to be a person who
would make excuses not to travel. Then
again, I realized it in time that I can always be too busy to travel and money
will always be scarce according to my travel ambitions. Therefore, I started
implementing a few strategies since 2015, and I have become a frequent traveler
come 2018.
Save money
As I said, money is always too less for vacation plans.
Earlier, I used to think that road trips require a lot of money whenever I saw
the pictures of people on Facebook. Every other person seemed to travel abroad,
which made me feel so low at times. However, I happened to talk to a couple of
travelers who were fond of road trips around India. They had strategically
combined luxury travel with budget travel. They would often travel in groups of
3-5 and split the costs to bring down the overall expense. They had also hired
a Self-Drive Car Rental for a road
trip to Spiti Valley.
The conversation with them made me realize that I do not
need lakhs of rupees to go for road trips or even to travel abroad. Many
beautiful countries are affordable to travel, and I started taking cues from
travel bloggers since then. By saving just a few hundred or thousand rupees every
month, I started accumulating a good amount of money, which I presently use to
spend on holidaying in India. As I grow in my career, I would aim for foreign
locations as well, but I am happy at whatever I am doing right now.
Having a companion
When I was a bachelor until last year, I had conflicting
thoughts in my mind about marriage because I always thought that married people
cannot travel much. On the other hand, the harsh reality was that I was not
traveling much even when I was single. I would always ask my friends to go for
a vacation with me, but everyone had their own tantrums. Surprisingly, I have
got a wonderful travel partner as I got married to Anushka last year. She is
the best travel buddy I have got as we have same interests whenever we go out
of the city. Now I have stopped forcing friends to tag along, even though I ask
them once or twice.
Prioritizing things
As I continue to work at my job, I have found out that I
need to sort out many things so that I can travel more often. I used to keep
myself occupied with unnecessary things such as gossips in the office, useless
parties, talking to negative people, using too much of social media. I started
sorting out these things and kept them on lowest priority since I needed to
focus on researching about destinations I want to travel. Now I have more time
to find out the lucky draws, travel contests, and attend bike rallies. I sleep
early at night so that I can begin my day at a fresh note. Sorting out my life
has made me a better and frequent traveler, which has indeed given me more
peace in my mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment