What’s the worst travel experience I’ve ever had? Well, that’s the thing—I’m not sure I have one.
I travel a lot and I don’t recall any one instance I would certify the worst.
Call me blessed, lucky, or simply an eternal optimist.
Every time things fly off the handle and my itinerary ends up looking like a soaking wet puppy, something else falls into place, and I have almost always come away feeling, Huh… didn’t see that coming, God, but am I grateful or am I grateful!? Thank you!
Be it in September 2018, during my quest to lay eyes on the elusive Neelakurinji flowers that bloom once every 12 years, or on the journey in July 2025 to say hi to my favorite Shiva during the monsoons in Trimbakeshwar two years ago, Nature revealed herself to me in both her sweetest and her most ferocious avatars.
Kodaikanal refused to lift its bridal veil for me that September. My entire trip ended up being a misty door that never opened. Until the last day, when I went for a quick walk to a garden near my hotel just before tea. Bam! It started raining out of nowhere. Drenched to the bone, I kept walking. My date with Ms. Neela had to be honoured!
Just when everything seemed to go awry, the clouds lifted, the mist cleared, and there she was in all her soft glory. The softest mauve, shaped like a tiny bell, Ms. Neela presented herself to me in a place I had least expected to find her.
The garden hop was to let off some steam from gathering frustration built up over days lost to mist. Who was to know I would find what I was in search of at a stop that wasn’t even in the itinerary?
Something similar happened in Trimbakeshwar. There was no forecast of rain that day, yet I carried my rain gear all the way to the temple, only to leave it in my rental cab in the parking lot. Once I had walked far enough that I couldn’t run back to retrieve it, the clouds burst.
It poured—rain unlike anything I had ever experienced, and mind you, I spent my childhood in one of the wettest regions of India. Blinded by the water from every direction, I was caught in a stampede-like situation at the entrance of the temple. Somehow saving myself and my dignity, I found myself standing for hours, shivering like a wet cat in a queue to reach the main sanctum.
I don’t know why, but I was deliciously happy that day. Singing inwardly to Shiva, I spent the time lost in my own world. Halfway through, my hands and feet went numb from the cold. But I made it in, had my darshan, and by the time I reached the parking lot, after an hour lost trying to locate the cab, the rain started letting up.
Whether it was being stranded for hours on a mountain road in Munnar and thus narrowly escaping a major accident, or evading a landslide high up in the mountains near Badrinath, Time made sure I stayed alive for more such exhilarating adventures.
Both times, I reached just in time to escape getting caught in a nightmarish accident. The first one involved fatalities. I was stuck on the road for hours, but I had enough food and snacks for the driver and me to last us through the day. The second time saw my bus precariously perched on a barely-there, threadlike road, yet it still made it safely to the dharamsala where I was staying.
And then there was that one time when my trusted sneakers came untied and I fell off a cliff. Well, almost… I was saved at the last second by a rock that stood as a sentinel for featherweights like me!
Or that time when I almost died from a stomach bug, keeping myself alive long enough to get to a hospital only because of my obsessive-compulsive need to travel with an emergency medical kit.
Life has had a way with me, keeping me in her bosom, unscathed, making sure I am present to her surprises and answer her calls of distress like a seasoned pro—especially when I am away from home.
How can I forget that last day in Kashi, when Google Maps ended up blessing me with the best day of the entire trip! All that I had missed so far, for various reasons, ended up lining themselves up on the same road that I was not even supposed to take. One mistaken turn and the stars aligned themselves to lay out everything I wanted to see and had somehow missed.
Or the week when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. My aunt got lost in a massive temple and had me hunt for her for hours. I kept calm, found her and treated myself to a masala dosa.
A migraine made me miss my connecting bus in the ensuing melee, so I coolly booked an intercity Uber instead.
A politician decided to hold a major roadshow on the very day I had a road trip planned on the same route, so I changed my plan, took myself to a different city, and spent a day sightseeing there.
I got sick, but I came back home with a bag full of stories of my stupendous spontaneity.
When one has spent their entire life traveling by all modes of transport, whether for work, pleasure, or relocation, one gains a perspective on life that is very different from the rest.
As I said, call me blessed or plain lucky, or just an eternal optimist; I always find something incredibly beautiful, indescribably good, and unimaginably kind when faced with the worst.
So my worst travel experience? They were just the best, disguised as the worst.
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