Shipra is my fiancée and the first of contributors at the blog. She has worked with one of the largest airline conglomerates in the world, and is now based in Mumbai. Shipra has lived, worked and travelled across 4 continents. We travel often enough, together and separately. These are her perspectives, as she gets used to the world of business and leisure travel and our hobby!

• The Novice Perspective: Initiating my Fiancée to Points & Miles
• The Novice Perspective: Getting used to Airport Lounges
• The Novice Perspective: Benefiting from hotel loyalty programs
• The Novice Perspective: Maximising hotel promotions is a fun game!
• The Novice Perspective: Choosing credit cards to fuel the travel passion
• The Novice Perspective: Airline loyalty pays off

I have been away for a while. Working, travelling and really absconding from the internet.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been pondering over a question – Why do we travel?

Our trips, whether we call them vacations, or getaways, or adventures or explorations are all inspired by a hidden passion. The wildlife enthusiasts travel to places for animal spotting,  the architecture admirers will follow the Greek ruins, the shopaholics  have destinations like Milan and Dubai on their hit list, the golfers plan vacations around golfing across the globe and then in between are travellers like me, limited by time and budget who often think that the primary reason to travel is  to relieve stress and break the everyday monotonous routine.  Little did I realise that my self assessment was so wrong. 

Two weeks back I flew out for a weekend break in Hyderabad. 48 hours in the city and we explored the city, sniffing around for best biryani at Paradise, savouring the Chaar Koni Naan from the days of the Nizam and sampling a lavish Andhra fare at Rayalaseema Ruchulu. Over the Good Friday long weekend, I was in Goa and Ajay and I spent a lot of time exploring Goan food. The coming weekend, I am off to Bangalore, and even though I have lived in the city for close to a decade, I still begin hunting the internet to figure out which new restaurants have opened up in the city. In hind sight I realise, the minute we booked our air tickets to a new place, I sub consciously start hunting for the best places to eat in the city.

While, I’ve explored 11 cities in the last 1.5 years, the one common thread in all these places has been exploring the culture through the local cuisine. Our visit to Jaipur was centred around finding the best Lal Maas in the city, in Saigon we hunted down the most authentic Pho and when I was planning my break to Goa, and I was busy researching places to savour the best Bibinca in town.

Now that I think about it, all of us have a motivation to travel and while discovering a new place is the end result, the reason behind the journey can be many.  More than a lesson this has been a self discovery for me. I have learnt that I enjoy the city best when I explore it through its local cuisine and dive into the food fair. 

So here’s a question for you, Where are you going on your next trip and what is your reason to travel to this place?

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