Either the world is going mad or I have become too soft. Everywhere I turn, the fad amongst people planning a break is to go on adventure holidays. These involve travelling to hard-to-reach destinations, living in camps and indulging in other assorted outdoorsy activities. Just recently I was chatting with a few friends in Bombay, talking about prospective vacations and trips, and most of them were planning to go into the jungles to see tigers, or trek through Nepal, or drive (if you can call fighting a car over potholed bullock cart tracks that) to Leh and Ladakh. Now these may sound exotic, but most of these places are in the most infra-structure challenged regions of the sub-continent. One cannot reach these places by air. You need to use multiple modes of travel, quite often including horses, camels and carts to get there. The views and scenery, once you reach your destination can be quite good, that is if your body and brain can appreciate it through the pummeling and jarring that they have endured.
A few of my friends are soon embarking on a motorcycle trip to Northern India, on low technology Royal Enfield bikes. They will traverse the worst roads (if one can call them that) imaginable, over harsh terrain, in terrible weather, on a contraption that should have been abolished a century ago. The machine is uncomfortable on the best of roads; to actually pay good money to ride it for a week in those conditions is the height of masochism. For the pleasure of doing this, they will pay top dollar, risk physical injury, probably suffer from dysentery, live in scruffy hotels and come back with photographs of mountainous scenery that could have been taken from any European town.
Most of these places will not have electricity, or cut it off once it gets dark - basically when you need it most! (Seems quite a convenient way to save costs and charge your customers for it.) Food would also be extremely basic, and very often served when there is no chance that you would feel hungry. Pre-dawn breakfast and post-dark dinner without lights, are not conducive to eating well. Basically the concept is that you pay five star rates to enjoy negative star amenities, and you get bragging rights for the rest of your life as part of the package.
I have had endured hardship and “roughing it out” as a kid. Being brought up in a lower middle class family in a developing country, provided me with enough perspective and first-hand experience about the harder aspects of life, to seek those any longer. We travelled to nearby hill stations on shoe string budgets, with three meals a day as optional. We used to grace establishments, where to call the conditions coarse would be an understatement, but we accepted them as we accepted a lot of other inconveniences. And this was when one travelled as a family - I would not even like to comment on our trips with friends. We had not seen better, and to be away from the madding crowd for a few days, even if it was to an undeveloped part of an under-developed country, was a luxury beyond compare. The quality of the air itself was worth the hardships, coming as we did from the smog-ridden polluted mega-city. To get brief glimpses of vistas with no signs of humans loitering, littering or defecating was priceless.
Now I favor staying in modern hotels, to colonial era buildings that provide you with an experience of life in the Eighteenth Century. I am definitely not at ease with tents, using leaves to wipe oneself, and the absence of electricity and running water. I also prefer to travel to places that are easily accessible to middle aged and slightly fussy tourists. Smooth roads and air-conditioned cars are a necessity, and direct air travel is the more preferred modes of conveyance. I seek comfort, over experience and being one with nature. If there is a good view, it has to come with Twenty First Century amenities. If there are animals to be seen, I would prefer to see them from within air-conditioned comfort, with a tall glass of a refreshing drink in my hand, and canapé’s within easy reach. If that is not possible, then watching National Geographic on a wide screen television will suffice. The only hardship I would ‘choose’ to endure now is a rain shower - in the comfort of a hotel bathroom!
As a wit put it – The road less travelled, is less travelled for a reason.
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