How I Manage Traveling With Kids Schedule

I cannot ignore the fact that I am a passionate traveler, who by the fate of time, is a parent as well. I have to keep in mind my kid’s holidays so that I do not disturb their studies for my travel plans. However, I have developed my schedules in a way that my personal ambitions do not poke into my professional life as well.

Maximize the family time

My parents live in Pune, while I live with my family in Mumbai. They keep visiting us almost every month for a weekend or so, and we also go there. However, whenever I have a travel plan coming up, but the kids are busy with school, I call my parents to live at my home. They babysit both my babies and I am off to a new honeymoon with my husband. We cherish the personal time we get with each other, regardless the point that we both miss the kids as well.

On the positive side, the children get time to spend with their grandparents. Thank God, they gel up well with each other. My mom is an energetic person and she takes care of the tot’s tantrums, up to a limit of course. If the children behave too badly, she is the one to teach them a lesson as well. All in all, I am happy that we all are a big Indian family, who live their individual lives along with the family life.

Traveling with kids

Even when the babies get one holiday from their school, or if there is a long weekend, we set off to an offbeat destination. I hate the clichéd cities and hill stations in India because they become immensely crowded during holidays. That is why; I have to prepare the list of places we can visit during such holidays because I cannot waste time in planning whenever there is a holiday looming over.

Last year, we hired Self Drive Car Rental Mumbai to go to Mahableshwar when the kids were not heavily burdened with work at school. They could afford to miss a few classes and I promised their teachers to get them back on track once we returned from vacations. The place was not very crowded, thankfully, and we had a great weekend.

There is one thing that I have noticed when the kids are at home and we are traveling; they are becoming independent individuals. The younger one is only four years old at present, and he knows where to put his laundry. He sits quietly while eating food, and does not need TV to finish off the stuff on his plate. Thanks to my parents who inculcated this positive habit in him, which I could not do.

My older son is ten years old, and he already knows how to google anything whenever we make travel plans. He finds out the best places to visit, the hotel deals, and many other things. I am amazed for sure how these kids are growing up so well! Thanks to their traveler parents and cooperative grandparents that they are able to become responsible beings.

The Only Disadvantage of Traveling By Car

Much has been written about the pros of traveling by car and extended road trips, but hardly anyone talks about the cons of it. Every coin has two sides, and the road trips also have their benefits and detriments. Since I am talking about the negative sides of road trips, it does not mean that I do not like them. I am an ardent lover of traveling by car, but I felt like writing about the flip side of it. At least a decade ago, road trips used to be cheaper and much more fun than today. Let me take my heart out as I talk about the disadvantages of traveling by car.

Traffic jam

Earlier when I had started going for road trips during my college time, there used to be hardly any cars on the road. However, nowadays the immense traffic on the road irritates me every time I go out on the road, especially during office hours. Passing through the small cities is one hell of a task because the vehicles are not regulated at all, and I am sorry to say, but people do not have any civic sense to be on the road. The animals, children, pedestrians, and bikes are all on the same street where the high-speed vehicles should be. All this chaos causes traffic jam even in metropolitans, forget the Tier-II cities of India, which are in massive bedlam.

Time consumption

 I have to be honest here; road trips do take a lot of time and effort. If the distance is more than 100 kilometers, I have to do a lot of mental preparation to be there in the car for hours at a stretch. With the growing age after forty, being in the car for more than three hours definitely seems painful. If I leave for Goa from Mumbai, it takes me more than 11-12 hours to be there, which is a long time of course. Although extended hours of journey do not seem much painful when I have someone to talk to in the car. Being alone for such a long journey is undeniably awful.

Hidden costs

Being on a road trip does involve a few hidden costs, which may sometimes shoot up the budget by a great deal. If the car breaks down, the prices of the motels are great than I expected, the food is expensive, and the toll taxes there at every hundred kilometers; I have to bear the costs of every such expense. All these expenses are really agonizing, mainly because I am habitual of going for a road trip when these expenses used to be much lower than the current times.

Bad weather

Although the bad weather can impact traveling in all modes of transport, sometimes it becomes especially challenging to deal with it when it is raining or snowing heavily. Driving on the wet roads is highly risky since the visibility is too low and the roads become slippery. Secondly, if the snowfall occurs on the hilly areas, it becomes equally disturbing to drive the car in a zero-visibility environment because of snow.

I do love going on the road trips despite all these disadvantages because of the peace of mind that I get on the roads. Someone has rightly said that the roads are an answer to all problems. Whenever I feel lost or confused, I rent Self Drive Cars in Mumbai and hit the road with my friends or even alone. Just after a few hours, I feel my nerves calming down, and I can find answers to all my problems.