There are some things money can’t buy, and an old-fashioned holiday is one of them. You can spend hundreds of thousands of rupees (or dollars, or Euros) on private islands, apartments on the French Riviera, or on African safaris, stuff the kids’ calendars with personality enhancing workshops and their cupboards with kiddie haute couture, but if there’s anything that counts as priceless, it’s going back ‘home’ to do — nothing at all!
If that’s a tad difficult — since grandpa and grandma these days don’t want to be lumped with the children either, especially since Ramu kaka, the temperamental cook, is very likely to go AWOL at the first sight of countless guests — here is my recommendation of what you might want to plan for your upcoming holiday as a joint Indian family.
Vacation en famille
Not just you and the kids, rope in the parents and, for good measure, the in-laws, siblings and cousins, even close friends, and book yourself a week-long luxury cruise. The destination hardly matters, you can even go dutch, it’s a great way to bond with the folk, the ambience is cheerful (you can hardly sulk on board a ship), and the tyrannies of Ramu kaka, the cook, won’t matter obviously since nobody will have to worry about feeding an army of guests at home. Cost: Calculate the cruise at Rs.1 lakh per head per week, and multiply by three for air tickets, ground transportation, and at least another week in the country where you will embark/ disembark from your cruise ship. For fancier accommodations and your own personal party place, you can buy yourself a sea-going tub at the going rate of Rs.1.5 crore onwards.
Acquire a library
To find the time to read, you’ll need the equivalent of weekends at the neighbourhood Neemrana non-hotel where they don’t have TVs to turn your brains into mush. Or, how about reading in the Jacuzzi, or the bathtub? Getting hold of books is the easy part, starting to flip them… now that’s where you have to put in the effort. Cost: You can get yourself a good library off Amazon or Flipkart with a little help from geeks and nerds in the family for a couple of lakh distributed over thrillers, literature, the classics and a few illustrated tomes. Or if that seems like too much work, just splurge on a Kindle DX, available for Rs.20,000.
Book a stress buster
Replace the ship on the cruise with a spa at some great location, in India (Ananda in the Himalayas tops, but all chains now come with spas attached), or outside (Bali and Bangkok are winners, or you could try the new hot favourite: Istanbul). It doesn’t matter whether you’re in or out of shape — a week (minimum) of having the stress busted out of you, the skin exfoliated, the face kneaded, the back massaged — ah, bliss! Resident spas are a tad expensive, especially if, as on the cruise, you plan on taking the extended family along. Cost: Including the therapies, accommodation, meals and travel, calculate your spa tariff at Rs.50 thousand per person, per day.
Drive-thru
This one’s about buying a Mercedes Benz van, and parking it in your home — no, not in India, where it would be wasted, but in your (or a relative’s) home in London. If you’re not looking to splurge, then you could lease your cruiser. But plan on getting a chauffeur, you don’t want to be fighting with your navigator about exits. The best driving destinations are probably in Europe (Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain), as coast to coast in the US can get a trifle wearying, while the great Australian outback is great if you’re looking for adventure rather than luxury. Cost: The van will be an investment at Rs.60-70 lakh post taxes and fit-outs, money well spent since holidays on the highway require luxury on four wheels rather than on the options likely to come your way on the expressway.
The author is a Delhi-based writer and curator
