The Novice Perspective: What is your motivation to travel?

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!


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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About Ajay

Ajay Awtaney is the Founder and Editor of Live From A Lounge (LFAL), a pioneering digital platform renowned for publishing news and views about aviation, hotels, passenger experience, loyalty programs, travel trends and frequent travel tips for the Global Indian. He is considered the Indian authority on business travel, luxury travel, frequent flyer miles, loyalty credit cards and travel for Indians around the globe. Ajay is a frequent contributor and commentator on the media as well, including ET Now, BBC, CNBC TV18, NDTV, Conde Nast Traveller and many other outlets.

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Comments

  1. New and interesting Food places – always the first thing I look up whenever I travel to a place to. As you mentioned Bangalore, thought I’d recommend these if you are looking for reccos, that is. This isn’t really an answer to your question from the blogpost, more a need to share local foodie knowledge to a fellow foodie:D

    – Monkey Bar : Smallish place, smoky but superb food and truly great cocktails
    – Olive : The new menu is gorgeous, literally 🙂
    – Suryawanshi : Saavji-mess type place in Whitefield but some of the best Malvan thalis ever
    – Coringa: Coastal Andhra food. Best gone in a large group so you can sample more things.
    – CTR, Malleshwaram and Janardhan Hotel: Great coffee and masala dosas.
    – Basanth Residency, Majestic: Jolada Roti meals

    Enjoy.

    • @smita thanks for the reco’s. Not sure how many can we squeeze in over a weekend. We recently did Andhra food in Hyderabad so that may not be happening, but monkey bar for sure. And you meant MTR, or did you mean CTR?

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