Your Holiday Is Someone's Home
We all love to travel, especially after the advent of social media, where drone shots make us believe we could stand in that exact frame ourselves. Travel has surged tremendously post-Covid — salaries have exploded for some, and for others, the influencer economy has erupted into a viable livelihood.
But amidst all this fanfare, we have forgotten the essence of travelling. When we move from our home to a different place, we forget that for the people living there, that place is their home. We bask in its beauty, we savour the hospitality of their culture, we collect experiences of a lifetime — all without bothering to understand anything about the place itself.
We pass sweeping judgments about every destination we visit. We reduce their entire existence to a binary: good or bad. We never pause to learn anything about how that place came to be. What we should do instead is walk its streets as much as possible, shop where the locals shop, eat where the locals eat.
Even long, aimless walks will draw you closer to the pulse of a place. If you replicate most of your daily rhythms there, you begin to notice that every place has an internal cadence. People operate at a certain pace. Not everyone is rushing toward something. Some places offer a quiet, unhurried ease that you desperately craved — especially if you arrived from somewhere like Mumbai, New York, or London.
Whenever I travel somewhere, I make it a habit to read a book that defines that place — from its earliest history to its most contemporary moment. The heritage, the culture, the fault lines. When I walk their streets, I want to feel the weight they carry. I don't want to lose myself entirely in the scenery — though that may be why I came — but I also want to inhabit their struggles. I imagine living there and trying to do everything I do in my own city.
This exercise always humbles me. We rarely appreciate that city life is simply not replicable in a small town, no matter how developed the country. The rhythm is entirely different. The challenges are almost inverse. We gravitate toward places where nature is abundant, but that very nature — so breathtaking from a distance — brings its own relentless demands. We never have to confront those demands because we retreat to comfortable hotels and resorts. The ordinary people there live with them every day.
And so the least you can do is respect their home the way you would want someone to respect yours. One way to show that respect is by learning about their culture and their identity. I say learning — not just asking — because showing up with no preparation, despite having all the information in the world at your fingertips, is often more dismissive than it appears.
Open Wikipedia, Grokipedia, or any AI tool to gather as much as you can about the place you are visiting. Buy a book at the airport or on Amazon that gives you the full picture. Begin reading once you have finished packing, because that is precisely when your curiosity is sharpest and your appetite for the material is at its most intense.
Show someone's home the respect you would want shown to yours.