Welcome to Day 15 of my blogging challenge for February 2022.Today is a Tuesday and the theme is travel. We call this Travel Tuesday. So let us take a look at travel plans for 2022, and let me begin with a rather basic question: Are you a planner, or a spontaneous traveler?
In this post
Planning helps: Travel in 2018
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February is an interesting month.The New Year resolutions are 6 weeks old, exams for students are around five or six weeks away. This is a good time for parents, families, and friends to start making travel plans. In 2022, the months holds particular relevance. Third wave of COVID and Omicron are both on the wane. Many of you may have started planning for the rest of the year. Some may already have visited a place or two of interest. I was speaking to someone today, they had just returned form a weeklong trip to Manali and Amritsar in Northern India.
Post-COVID traveling
I have known of people who actually make their travel plans at the spur of the moment. Sometimes it’s great to be spontaneous. At the other end of the spectrum, there are others who plan out their vacations well in advance. Then there are many others who are somewhere in between. We experienced both over the past few years.
2018- The year of planning (and a lot of travel)
The placed I mention below exclude business travel!
We had tried setting our travel goals at the beginning of 2018, and it turned out to be very exciting, travel wise. The New Year’s Day began with a day long trip to the temple town of Lepakshi in Andhra Pradesh. That weekend, we sat down and chalked out our travel for the rest of the year. At that time, I was also consulting with a nonprofit organization, and between my wife’s vacation days and my “workation” days, could coordinate well.
Mid-January we did a week long road trip to Coastal Karnataka (Mengaluru, Udupi, Murudeshwar and Gokarna)
In February, we visited the canyons at Gandikotta, also in Andhra Pradesh
April was a three day trip to Hampi, which later got extended by a day because I had a very severe backache.
In May, a two week trip to Europe.
Updated:
We were scheduled to travel to Munnar during August, but because of floods we had to cancel our trip.
December, we took a three day road trip to Northern Karnataka : Hampi (again), Badami, Pattadakkal, and Gulbarga.
Immediately following this trip, we went to Pune for a family wedding.
Because we had planned ahead, we could take the breaks properly and tickets and hotels were booked in advance. Saved us time (and money) and we could stretch our wallet for additional trips.
In 2019, we decided to take it a little slow, and limited travel to Ahmedabad early in the year, followed by a couple of trips to Mumbai. By end-2019, we were in the middle of getting our new home ready, and in early 2020 COVID hit.
Last year, we visited Ahmedabad and Surat for a week in January. This has become a tradition of sorts, which got repeated this year as well. In February, my wife went for an all-women Ski Trip to Kashmir. In March, we both got hit by COVID, but that did not prevent us from planning out travel. In October, a business trip to Kodagu (Coorg) was followed by two more trips. In December first week, we were in Amritsar, and around Christmas, we were in Gokarna area again.
Travel and Holiday plans for 2022 – looking quiet so far
We have decided to stay in Bengaluru at least for the first half of the year, unless we are again required to travel to Gujarat. The past two months involved a lot of travel. We had two short trips of about a week each in Amritsar followed by a weeklong road trip in Karnataka. Most of January was spent in Gujarat because of a health emergency in the family. Which means that in that two month period, Buddy had to be placed at his pet boarding for extended periods. Back to back trips also caused a lot of disruption on the work front as well as our lifestyle. As a result, we have decided to put off our travel plans on hold
Planned versus Impulsive travel?
How do you plan your travel every year? More specifically, which is the one trip in 2022 you would like to make ? It can be a family vacation or a wedding, a business trip that you were putting off, or a solo trip, just for leisure.
About this blog post
This post was written as a part of my #bloggingchallenge for February 2022. You can stay updated on my posts for this challenge, by visiting the Blogging Challenge Tracker page.
Wordcount for this post: 700. Time taken for drafting, editing and publishing: 55 minutes
Feature Image for Travel Tuesday blog post by Amar Vyas
This post was updated on 2022-06-04