Sinjini Mitra
What if your next vacation has no room service, no comfortable bathroom or any Wi-Fi services? Doesn’t it sound more like a punishment than a vacation? Yet, this is exactly what the growing trend of ‘reverse vacations’ is all about.
Unlike traditional holidays, where comfort is often the main attraction, reverse vacations involve choosing simpler and less convenient experiences. Travellers choose to stay in remote villages, basic homestays or off-grid cabins, and as a mode of transportation they often choose long walks over cabs; in these vacations they spend days without the comforts they usually depend on.
The idea is simple: sometimes, you have to lose convenience to appreciate it.
Modern life has made almost everything so easy and reachable. Food arrives at our doorstep, and cabs appear within a few minutes. We never think about how these conveniences shape our daily lives.
According to counselling psychologist Athul Raj, stepping away from these comforts for a few days can help people to notice what they normally take for granted. A few days without food delivery or constant internet can make a hot shower and a comfortable bed feel like a luxury.
But reverse vacation is not all about competing to see who can suffer the most; there’s a lot more to it.
There is a difference between healthy discomfort and unnecessary stress. Sleeping in a basic cabin can be adventurous, but feeling unsafe, losing sleep or ignoring basic needs is absolutely unnecessary. For someone who’s already exhausted or burnt out, a difficult holiday is the last thing they need.
Link to Instagram
Going off-grid turns travel into more than a getaway it becomes a chance to disconnect from convenience and reconnect with the experience. Link to instagram
And then there is Instagram, a trend that begins as an attempt to escape digital pressure can quickly become another social-media performance. If the travellers start to choose increasingly extreme experiences just to prove that their holiday was “harder”, the whole purpose of this trend loses its meaning.
The real attraction of a reverse vacation is about what happens after the discomfort is over. Without the usual comfort and convenience, travelers may become more present, adapt to uncertainty and discover that they actually need much less than what they thought.
Because sometimes the best luxury is returning home and realising that the ordinary things were never ordinary.