Travel Mates

Many of us have been on a lot of holidays with our immediate families and close friends. Few go on holidays with total strangers or acquaintances.

Having been on a similar trip recently, I realized the importance of choosing the right travel mates, especially for leisure holidays. Because no matter where one goes, if the basic ideas of holidaying are different, it is bound to make the holiday less enjoyable for everyone. Some quick tips on this one:

1) Do you want a relaxing vacation versus your travel partners trying to touch upon a lot of places?

If this basic difference exists, then it will be very difficult to arrive at a common itinerary, one person will always be tired while the other might feel like covering more places on the same day. Always discuss the basic itinerary with your travel partner before commencing on the actual trip, to avoid such differences and discoveries on the trip.

2) Are you looking for a budget vacation while your travel partner seeks luxury travel?

Simple things like where to eat, how to travel, where to stay can create friction if this difference exists. You will always want to eat at good places while your partner is looking at ways of saving money. You will want to stay in a beach property while your partner looks for budget hotels.

3) Food Preferences 

This might seem trivial, but if either of you is hung up on the kind of food you prefer, a lot of time will get wasted in choosing the place to eat every day. For example, you may be a vegetarian. But be open to eat at places which also serve non vegetarian, in case any one in your travel group relishes that food.

4) Do you want to visit a temple while the other person is looking for beaches?

The same city may have multiple places of interest. If yours and your travel partners preferences do not match, try to strike a balance rather than always sticking to one person’s choice of places.

More stuff like choice of music, quieter versus busier places, etc also add to the above.

All these points seem too trivial and obvious now to me. But they weren’t , till I actually travelled and faced some of these differences with my travel companions 🙂