WAH’s New Year Travel Resolutions for 2013

New year’s right next door, and it is that time of the year again - no, I did not mean that time of the year when you feel cold. No, not even when you get drunk and party all night on new year’s eve. What i was talking about was it’s that time of the year when we make resolutions for the new year, and never stick by them. Anyway, so we were talking about resolutions in office yesterday, ‘travel resolutions for 2013′ specifically, and damn, I suddenly feel these guys are cooler than I am. Anyway, this is what a WAH employees travel resolution list looks like. Hope you enjoy it.

1) Aashima “One more Excel and I’ll jump off the roof“ Rathee

Resolution - to try and become a little bit of a sea person

I love the mountains. Have always done so. Ever since I first laid eyes on them, on that very first trip to Rishikesh as an eight year old. I remember espying them from a distance, the hazy blue shapes, as we neared the foothills. Then as the car climbed upwards along the winding road, the air got all different, cooler and clearer. The next day we went for a little walk into the woods and I was sure, even then, that I would never get enough of these walks in the hills. It’s been some years since but I haven’t outgrown that feeling one bit. Maybe it is the steadfastness of the mountains that I love so or the simplicity of the sense of purpose that climbing gives. If anything, that feeling has only grown stronger and somehow a holiday now automatically means a holiday in the mountains. So much so that my experience of the sea is limited to the restless waves of Kanyakumari and the easy going Arabian Sea off the coast of Varkala. It’s quite obvious that things have been very lopsided till now. So, it is my resolution this year to give the sea a chance. Choose a place by the oceanfront for my next holiday and spend some time on the beach. I’m certain the sea has a steadfastness of its own and I think I’ll like to find it.

2) Alphy “I am a Mallu, so my Manager likes me” Geever

I truly love and cherish my annual Kerala-going. A stroll in my uncle’s rubber thottams; a chat with the simple country folk in the neighborhood; a quiet evening with my legs dipped in a stream- there is nothing more stimulating than the kind of solitude I feel in doing these effortless things. I like to be lazy. It inspires the most genuine things in my mind. Everything in those short episodes gives me clarity- about life, about my purpose, about what it takes to be happy.

My idea of a holiday, on any random day, is to experience that kind of clarity. Also, it is to have nature’s best - to breathe without having to worry about anything and to feel significant in a very, very insignificant world. At some point in time, I seriously wanted to learn a native language and settle down with a tribe. Maybe marry a hunter-gatherer; and hunt and gather for the rest of my life. No, really. I still harbor that dream somewhere in the murkier corners of my mind.

For me, a getaway from Delhi does not mean the glitter and clutter of another city. I mean, there are those things that one likes to do with friends, or with office mates, or things that aid your intellect. So you go trekking in some hill station, or take a heritage walk, or see another city for the sake of it. But none of these are holidays in my sense of what a holiday should be like. My definition of a holiday is a little shady like that. Holidays are when I can pop out of my bubble, and feel free and new. At present, that happens in its purest form in the murkier corners of my mind. Sigh!

3) Deepak “I am the CEO, why does this Alphy intern not listen to me” Wadhwa

Wilderness has always fascinated me. Animals fascinate me. Blame it on Life of Pi or my inability to handle more humans, I want to take an expedition to the heart of wildlife - Kenya. Giraffes, Zebras or the huge African elephants, have read so much about this place that the very thought of being surrounded by countless species of wild animals makes me go wild.  It looks doable, as fascination for wildlife is one of the very few interests I have in common with my wife.

It’s been rightly said that you can judge a man’s heart by this treatment to animals. Even though I have never kept a pet at home, I have always felt a strange connection whenever I looked at them. They are similar in fact better than us in a lot of ways.

The only phrase I remember after chatting up for good 90 minutes at a trade show with someone who had stayed all her life is Kenya is that ‘ you don’t go to Kenya to see animals, animals come to see you’. The very idea of you being in a glass cage where animals come from all four sides to gaze at you, leaves me breathless.

I hate to admit that I am a luxury loving person. Any day i will settle for a resort with a spa and candle light dinner with a seven course meal than staying in a camp with a makeshift toilets in the middle of the jungle. While I wait for my good old friend to come back to me with a good discount on my SLR, I think I should ask my team to check when’s the cheapest flight to Nairobi out of Delhi in the next six months.

4) Harkirat “Nobody knows that im playing Truth & Dare on my iphone right now” Singh

Well, time really flies. I have been pushing back on a lot of things which were supposed to be done in 2012 and now its already time to figure out the stuff for 2013.

Well travel in 2013 will be dictated less by me, but more by my wife. Coping as she is, with a conman who conned her into marrying him showing the larger than life vision of a cosy life, multiple vacations a year, a exclusive beach villa with a yacht anchored off the coast, early evenings with dinner together every night, and what not (and then these folks @WAH say I’m not a Sales guy!!) I guess its her way of settling the scores by making me trek scores of kilometres every day and making me sleep in tents with large rocks and ice cold streams in the name of a bathroom knowing fully well how I crave for (even if my entrepreneurial passion doesn’t allow me to afford it) the creations of P.R.S. Oberoi, C.P. Krishna Nair, Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata and the like.

I could manage to maintain a happily married life in 2012 by agreeing to trek up to the Kolahoi Glacier in Kashmir but I guess 2013 is going to be difficult. I have a choice to make (men always face a stark choice when dealing with women – between the rock and a hard place) – to trek up to the Mount Everest Base Camp or do the Roopkund Trek. So my travel resolution is neither to do with the treks or the creations of Oberoi’s, Nair’s, Tata’s et al but more to do with ensuring another year of happiness for the girl who was conned by a master conman. If that means Mount Everest Base Camp or Roopkund, so be it.

5) Shivangi “None of these dummies can dance” Rajendran

The aim is to wander - not travel, not visit, not holiday but wander; no plans, no itineraries, no return ticket. Isn’t that the essence of being free? To rediscover yourself in a place as different from here as possible? Find some work at a local shack, have lunch with a new person every day, play volleyball with the beach bums, salsa with the best looking man in the room, make love with a stranger by the ocean.

Phew! Alright maybe I went a little too far! But is that just the stuff of imagination? Because as I write these words, I see my mother’s face glowering, and my traditional Indian upbringing threatens to engulf me.

And when you start writing for a travel company, your dream destinations are doubling by the day. Yesterday was the Copacabana, today Cappadocia, both at opposing ends of all cultural tangents. At the end of the day, I’m desperately searching for authentic baklava in Delhi. Just hop on a bike one morning and ride to Goa with my best bud and a road map, check; hop on a plane to Africa without a yellow fever vaccine and no shoes, check. When you give up passes to the hottest new nightclub on New Year’s Eve and decide to go cycling to the Himalayas, you’ve grown up!

So, what I really want to do this year, is to wander alone. Break free of all the invisible shackles and somewhere along the way, find out who I really am. I did manage to go shopping alone this year, and it was quite liberating! I think I must confess at this point, watching a movie alone is yet to be checked.

6) Neeraj “They always put me at the bottom” Narayanan

Well, you have already read what everyone had to say. As for me, well, I am going to Spain this 2013, to run with the bulls. If the bulls spare, what I currently consider to be delicious, my posterior, I shall take it as a sign and stay on in that beautiful country for some more time and will let a susheel Mallorcan girl seduce err patao me. We, Maria and I, shall then have our own house near the beach. Mornings will be spent selling beer to tourists, and in the evenings, Maria and I shall sip our beers and watch the waves. In the years up next, I shall lament about our kids – Mario and Super Mario – of why they are playing that stupid football instead of cricket, and she shall look at them proudly. Sigh, one can’t have it all.

In case the bulls do reduce me to a pulpy mess, I shall still travel in 2013. They may bind me up in bandages from head to toe, with only my nostrils peeking out, like a mummy; there may be a glucose drip attached to my body; I might be sitting on a wheelchair, but I shall take that set of wheels and go travel, up hill and down dale. Going down’s gonna be a breeze, err but pushing that wheel chair uphill might be a slight problem. I need an assistant, yo!

The point is, I shall travel, a lot more than I did this year.
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That’s it from us folks. We would love to hear about your travel resolutions as well, so if this post helps you think a little, and if you feel like expressing your own travel wishes, let us know man. Drop in a mail, and we shall publish your resolutions too! Cheers.