After winding up a long eventful day, kids were off to bed and I was so looking forward to snuggle in my blanket. The following morning was going to be a relaxed one since the Christmas vacations were starting. Soon this beautiful thought was interrupted by my husband who came home from work almost past 10 in the night and said “Honey start packing, we are going to Goa tomorrow”. I was dumb struck for few seconds not knowing how to react. My mind which had worked enough for the day suddenly started taking the roller coaster ride of panic-how will I pack? How do we travel? Will we get a hotel booking? This is such an overbooked season. Is this guy kidding? Has he gone mad? My maids have no clue about this. My house is not prepared for a week’s shutdown. This trip can’t be happening. While I was lost in my thoughts, my husband had already started living his trip. I am a person who works on plans, especially when trips are with kids but then my husband…well….the last minute person! This impulsive decision definitely came to me as a blower. Long story short, my husband convinced me for the trip and we were on road at 6 am next morning. This meant an absolutely unplanned trip with a lot of miss. At least that’s what I thought to begin with. While this trip turned out to be one of the most fun filled experience, I would like to share a few takeaways from this impulsive vacation:
1. Surprises are more exciting
When we plan a vacation in advance we (children and us) wait eagerly and spend a lot of time planning which is the usual monotonous way of going on a family vacation. When you wake up your children and surprise them by saying “get ready we are going for a trip”, the expressions and happiness on their faces are priceless! We create a memory.
2. Bonding on the go
Vacations that are planned last minute leave you with no budget for flight booking. We decided to make this a road trip which meant ample time in hand. Since I had conveniently forgotten to pack so called screens for children and since children did not get an opportunity or time to pack, we utilized our long drive for some quality family bonding. Everything from sharing jokes, sorting issues, listening to music, playing games was on the go. Something that is lacking in our mechanical routine.
3. You explore better
The road trip gave us ample opportunities to explore the route to our destination as we could stop as needed, relish on some local authentic food, explore the serenity of nature, unwind our stress and rejuvenate our minds while capturing the moments behind our camera lens.
4. Enjoy without expectations
When you plan your vacation, you also expect it to go in a certain way. But when you don’t plan, you just go with the flow. You learn to enjoy in the most basic way and children learn to adapt and adjust better since they get to realize that fun is the key to a perfect vacation and not the materialistic needs.
5. Sometimes Unplanned is better than planned
When we plan a vacation much in advance, we tend to pack a lot of unwanted stuff “just in case” because we have too much time and mind at hand. When we plan impromptu trips, mind and time both are in scarce. In this trip I realized, we are within our country and there is nothing that is not available and we can very well avoid carrying unnecessary stuff. This means we can travel lighter and focus on the essence of a vacation that is “fun”.
6. Nothing is impossible
Somebody has very rightly said “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible and suddenly you will realize you have done the impossible”. This is exactly what helped me in preparing my house for a week’s shut down and getting prepped for a week long unplanned vacation just within two hours.
Although my initial reaction to my husband’s enthusiasm was not something he deserved, but I am thankful to him for planning this unplanned vacation. Like we say “Best moments happen when they are unplanned”. On a lighter note I did make some friends jealous by sharing my impulsive vacation status on the social media. That was an icing on the cake!!Some of you might say we could be doing this in a planned trip too, but the synergy of an impromptu fun factor along with excitement that comes with an impulsive vacation is not comparable to a planned vacation.
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