I went on a trip alone and realised that 10 minutes of “me time” was all that I needed.

Bullet riders and road trips are like Indian politicians and black money – all talk and no action. After using it to ride to and fro from their office all week, their grand weekend voyages amount to a grocery shopping trip to the marketplace.

A new study holds tourism responsible for nearly a tenth of the world’s carbon emissions. It’s made me question my own rapacious record with mindless travel, brainwashed by propaganda that only a well-travelled life was worthwhile.

Lavasa’s story is not just a story of an environmental disaster or an economic nightmare, it is a cautionary tale of the failure of human hubris and a reminder that it may be easy to build a perfect city, but it is damn near impossible to buy its heart.

While trekking in Ladakh, I find myself buried waist-deep in debris. This is it, I tell myself. This is how I’ll go out, amid the oversold beauty of this high-altitude desert, as a slight disappointment to my mother and no book contract. I leave behind a flimsy legacy of FabIndia kurtas and Nicobar dresses.

I’m only 20 and as wanderlust-y as they come. But if there’s something I know, it’s that the third day of every vacation is the best. It forces you to rethink your priorities and do what you’d intended to do in the first place: See a city from a fresh perspective.

Discovering travel in my early 20s was truly a great thing. It allowed me to see beyond the confines of culture, tradition, food, and gender, but after a decade of globetrotting, the places, the people, and the people of the places, all start to feel like carefully curated prototypes of each other.

Discomfort. That’s all your experience is supposed to boil down to when you’re a solo woman traveller. No one asks a guy who is travelling on his own whether he felt uncomfortable on his solo trip.

Being a young adult on a vacation is like trying to finish multiple bucket lists at the same time. Things like making it on time, missing a train, covering all the popular spots, getting killer pictures, exploring hidden spots, and hopefully not blowing up all your money are constantly running through your head.

My boyfriend and I love having sex in the wild. We now plan to make an eco-porn video – to raise donations and help the environment.

In Shillong, time is set aside to take naps and dream. These dreams are then interpreted and bets are placed on archery.

If headphones were stolen from the Tejas Express, will Indian passengers spare lifejackets and safety floats on Angriya, the Mumbai-Goa cruise? Expect windows to be smashed and a “Pappu loves Pinky” graffiti to magically appear on the boat overnight.

For my generation, travelling has become the catalyst that we believe will magically propel us toward enlightenment. It’s essentially our version of the tree Siddhartha sat under to become Gautam Buddha.

How does a perennially loud, judgmental, scene-creating Indian tourist magically metamorphose into the Adarsh Indian Abroad?

With no reservations and no equipment, we embarked upon a Himalayan trek in Uttarakhand in search of a screenplay. What we found instead, was an ending.

In Himachal, I overheard some foreign tourists, who agreed on a few basic things: Indians do yoga and India is where one goes to find oneself. Twenty metres away, I sat like a lump, not attempting any ancient fitness routine or worshipping Kali. Instead, I contemplated my own Indianness.

Safaris start with a lot of excitement and end up in complete disappointment. At the end of it all, you emerge dustier than Gurgaon in peak summer. And all you spot is tiger poop, pug marks, and indifferent deer.

As ice descends on the barren land of Ladakh, all we have are photographs to keep us warm for the next six months.

After spending a night camping at Alaska’s Denali National Park, I realised that not all adventures need to be perfect.

Road trips are not about open-air convertibles and flying scarfs. They are about co-existing with cramps in stuffy cars that turn seemingly normal friends into tantrum-throwing monsters.

Personal accounts of Fitbit users state that the device has made them fatter. How? Well, for every 10,000 steps they complete, these reward-driven users gorge on junk food as if it is their last meal.

While tracking tigers from a Gypsy is undoubtedly a pulsating affair, being confined to a vehicle ensures an inauthentic jungle experience. Jim Corbett once said that the fear of death added zest to the life of all jungle inhabitants, and the best way to imbibe that zest is to experience the forest on foot.

I moved to Goa restlessly in search of a new turf. I’d always dreamt of a life full of travel. But after eight years, Bangalore is the home I have chosen to return to.

On a road trip to Rajasthan, when I heard Bullet Baba’s story, I sniggered. I probably shouldn’t have.

I was upgraded to the business class on my flight to Colombo from Chennai and I began to feel like a different person.