Wanderlust and Frolicking Feet

By : Juhi Bansal

If there is one thing I love more than fashion (oh yes there is!), its travelling!

I watched Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani again a couple of weeks ago (yeah sometimes I am THAT jobless!). While I would like to refrain from reviewing the movie (or even the styling quotient for now), there was one thing that hit home. Ranbir Kapoor’s character Bunny dreams of travelling the world and nurtures this dream by giving up on the conventional “settled” life-love, family, and friends.

We (my husband and I) don’t exactly maintain a travel scrap book like he did or have a planned travel bucket list but we do share his passion for wanderlust and agree to some extent that it requires not getting to lead a society defined successful life-manager by 25, VP by 30, first house by 28, Baby one by 29, two by 32 and so on. Needless to say we’ve missed many a deadline.

We are not saying we don’t want all this. We do, just not yet….right now all we want is to just pick up the bag, lock the house (rented one of course) and leave.

Imagine carrying baby food, diapers and a stroller in your backpack or flying (even coach) when you have an EMI looming over your heads. We’ve had our showdown moments with our parents. After all, they lived a planned life and so did their parents. They took time but thankfully they have made their peace with our madness now.

Maybe it is wrong planning. Maybe 20 years from now we’ll curse ourselves for letting go too much, but today, now, it is really-really fun.

We don’t do luxury trips. Neither do we aspire for them. In fact, when we saw Queen, we started reminiscing about our own trips- we backpack, stay in youth hostels and cook our own meals. We have a strict daily budget and sometimes our backpacks have more food than clothes! We’ve learnt that the quickest way to make new friends is by cooking and partying with the hostel lot (they are fun and know all the budget places!).

I actually cut corners on shopping while travelling. In fact, there have been trips where the only thing we bought was a fridge magnet because that’s how much our budget allowed us. We do not take cabs (especially in Europe) or eat out at Michelin rated ultra-expensive places. Of course, we do have our moments when we give in to the occasional craving for local liquor or dessert or night life.

We’ve often dreamt of giving up work altogether and travelling aimlessly for years. Of taking up jobs waiting tables or book keeping, learning local languages, cooking local cuisines but I think it’s either too late in life or still too early to live this. But, yeah the temptation keeps us going.

This section of the blog is dedicated to all our friends who had to give in to the “societal pressure” or were working hard making sure their families are secure. Through this, I’ll try and share our experiences, on how you can survive on a shoe-string budget and still make the most of it. May be you’ll travel vicariously through my blog today and return the favour tomorrow when your kids are all grown up and your house is set and it’s our turn to be stuck between a diaper and a back breaking EMI J.

A fun night out with fellow hostelers in Florence