My sister has been invited to a destination wedding in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. The programme seemed eminently bucketlist-worthy. The hosts had planned excursions to see the famous waterfalls and go on safaris. Then much to her dismay, my sister realised that it all meant getting up at the crack of dawn every day. It was a vacation but there was no sleeping in.
The very word ‘vacation’ has its roots in vacare (Latin) or ‘to be unoccupied’. But in reality, vacations are anything but unoccupied.
Recently, I was in Pokhara, Nepal. The room faced Mount Annapurna. We set the alarm to wake up before sunrise and then stood in the balcony with a cup of tea, watching the Annapurna massif turn pink and then gold. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but greedy for more, we decided to go up to nearby Sarangkot the next day for an even better view.
