By Rhea Mulani
This was the kind of exhaustion that built up slowly. I was working with the best in the business as a travel writer but the routine had worn me down: mentally, physically and emotionally. I quit my job, deleted the apps and tried to remember what silence felt like. I quit writing altogether. The burnout wasn’t urgent, but something felt off.
A month later, I was packing for a family trip to Madikeri, Coorg. Normally, I鈥檇 use the time to chase stories. This time, I left the pitch emails behind. If I were Ethan Hunt in a Mission: Impossible film, I鈥檇 have said 鈥榥o鈥 to any mission that came my way.
Branching out
In Coorg, I spent nine out of ten days in the suite my parents had booked, cocooned in a lush coffee plantation. Travel, which had always fueled my passion for writing, now repelled me. It became more of a chore: one of the prospective risks of making your passion your work. The only time I left was when my mum convinced me to join the family to go forest bathing in Madikeri’s thriving coffee estates. 鈥淐ome for the vitamin D,鈥 she said. I didn鈥檛 expect much.
It鈥檚 strange how things open up when you stop trying to optimise every moment. As a travel writer, I鈥檇 been trained to look for the highlights, to find the hook. But that day in Coorg, with no agenda, I felt something change.
Following the path, not the plan
We walked for over an hour and I remembered why I pursued travel writing in the first place. Silver oak trees arched above us. The path was damp, slippery and alive. The Japanese call this Shinrin-yoku, also known as forest bathing, only I was not expecting to encounter it in Coorg.
I watched as my dad chatted with our guide over Arabica beans, my mum collected fallen avocados and my sisters battled bugs. I was finally travelling the way I always meant to. Instead of chasing moments, I was inside them. A stray dog started following us. I was scared at first. But the deeper we went into the forest, the more I stayed close to it. We kept walking together, like we鈥檇 done this before. Just as the rain stopped, we heard the sharp call of the rare Malabar Grey Hornbill. We spotted it a few minutes later as it flew by.
I didn鈥檛 feel the need to make sense of it all. And perhaps that鈥檚 why my senses felt awakened, for the first time, in a long time.
We ended with coffee at the estate. Then wandered into a nearby spice market鈥攂ird鈥檚 eye chillies, cinnamon, cocoa. Everything we鈥檇 walked past earlier was now here in baskets. We sampled umpteen cocoa cubes (hazelnut was a unanimous favourite) and packed enough to last the rest of the year.
In the filler moments between the major ones, I realised how spontaneity became an antidote for my ennui. Every experience that day, one by one, awakened a different sense that had been turned off, courtesy of a hectic life. Monotony had left the (internal) chat.
Finding the green in the grey
Back in Mumbai, I鈥檝e tried to hold onto that feeling. My sisters and I, passionate sunset chasers, would visit the nearby Priyadarshini Park (PDP) in the pursuit of our newfound green streak. Here, we built a ritual of munching on the theatre-style cheese popcorn, washing it down with coconut water and malai from the local vendor.
The Malabar Hill walkway became another favourite haunt. Semi-suspended amongst gulmohar trees, this wooden bridge gave us something solid to trace with our feet and our thoughts.
Just opposite, past teasing chaat carts, sits the Bridgerton-esque Hanging Gardens. We鈥檇 follow the flowers through terraced lawns and tiled gazebos, surrounded by whatever blooms had decided to show up that week.
I didn鈥檛 feel ready to write again for months after returning from Coorg. But when I finally did, I knew it was forest bathing on this trip that made me find my way to the page. Now, I鈥檝e returned to travel writing with a renewed outlook to look at experiences as shared moments that don鈥檛 ask to be turned into stories. I was reminded of where it began for me. Travel as the objective, not an attempt to author a story. My senses aren鈥檛 on autopilot anymore. And when the exhaustion creeps back in, tackling that enemy is now a walk in the park.
Travelling to Vietnam made me realise that my love for holidaying is fading
Why solitude is now the most coveted commodity in travel
I hate adventure travel, so how do I always land up in terrifying situations?