I could never travel without planning every second of my trip. Here’s why I finally stopped

It’s safe to say the 2025 globetrotter is going through something of a reckoning. For the first time, we’re starting to ask ourselves not just where we want to go, but what we are going for. “I’m on holiday to chill and have fun, not tire myself out more than I would on a regular day,” shares Maitreyi Bhatia, who recently spent her honeymoon exploring the Prague-Vienna-Budapest circuit. She and her husband had signed up for a walking tour on their first day in Prague, but realised they were too jet-lagged to enjoy it and gave themselves permission to bow out midway. “My job is exhausting enough,” Bhatia adds, echoing what seems to be a universal sentiment of late capitalism and job insecurity. “I want to return energised, not more burnt out than I was before I came here.”

Photographed by Avani Rai

This shift in sentiment has been brewing for years, and slow travel has gone from being a hashtag to a marketing buzzword that tourism boards are increasingly leaning into. Even though the most recent season of The White Lotus was set in Thailand, which happens to be the it-destination of 2025, it’s telling that rather than rush to discover their surroundings, we see the characters sitting by the pool, sipping cocktails and experiencing the native culture through genuine character-building connections with the locals. Mysore-based therapist Akhila Phadnis believes travel is no longer about the prestige associated with geotagging an exotic location on your Instagram post or copping a rare Michelin-star meal. It’s become about exploring, if only temporarily, a new way of living. Staying in an Airbnb, doing your own laundry, going grocery shopping and learning to navigate the public transport system probably provide the most authentic insights into how other cultures operate. “Indians statistically spend the least amount of time on self-care,” Phadnis explains. “The possibility that you can do chores like laundry and grocery shopping after a full day of work and still have time left for other stuff is a mind-blowing concept for us.”