The Art of Doing Nothing While Travelling | Slow Travel Philosophy
On leaving behind the hurry, learning to linger, and why the best part of travelling might be the part you never planned.
For the longest time, probably since I was a kid, I wanted to escape Mumbai. Not because I hated the city. That would be too simple.
The people? No.
The culture? Definitely not.
In fact, I love Mumbai. I love Maharashtra to bits. There is an affection for this place that is difficult to explain to someone who hasn't grown up here—the food, the language, the chaos, the strange generosity of strangers, the monsoon, the local trains that somehow become a shared experience, the way the city keeps making room for people even when it seems to have run out of space.
I love it enough to know that my wanting to leave was never really about wanting to leave it.
Maybe it was about wanting to leave the version of myself that I had become inside it. My Mumbai was never quite the Marine Drive version. It wasn't evenings spent admiring colonial architecture or café hopping with friends. My Mumbai was more often an overcrowded local train, a bus that might never arrive, and the familiar sprint behind one when it finally did. It was drill machines in the middle of the afternoon, arguments in the ladies' compartment, and learning to calculate the speed of three vehicles before crossing a road. It was the constant overstimulation. The feeling that the city was always asking you to hurry up, move aside, get on, get off, cross the road, catch the train, catch the bus, make it on time.
It was a city that seemed to live in survival mode and without noticing, so did I.
But I also don't think this is unique to Mumbai. There is something peculiar about our hometowns. We can love them fiercely and still feel slightly out of place in them. We can know every shortcut and still wonder what life would feel like somewhere else. We can complain about the traffic, the weather, the noise, the people—and then feel strangely homesick the moment we're away.
Most of us, at some point, become a little seduced by the grass on the other side. We imagine that somewhere else, life will move differently.
More slowly. More quietly. More meaningfully.
Sometimes it does or you simply carry yourself there and discover that you are still you.
But occasionally, leaving home gives you enough distance to notice something you couldn't see while you were inside it.
For me, that happened when I moved to Himachal.
The first time I realised I had forgotten how to be idle
When I moved to Himachal for my postgraduate studies, something in me finally slowed down.
For the first time in a long time, I had stretches of time that didn't need to be filled. People would wait instead of honking from behind. There was no urgency attached to every movement. I could walk somewhere simply because I wanted to, I could sit outside without having to explain why; there was the strange freedom of living somewhere where almost nobody knew me.
There was no baggage of identity. Nobody knew what I had studied, what I was supposed to become, what I had done before, or which version of me they had already decided existed. I could simply be. It was in Himachal that I first understood how much I had been longing for an idle breath.
And, somewhat unexpectedly, it changed the way I travelled.
I used to travel like I had somewhere to be
For a long time, I was a spot chaser.
Give me a destination and I wanted to see it properly. The famous viewpoint, the waterfall, the temple, the café everyone recommended, the market, the sunset point. If there was a list of things to do, I wanted to finish it.
There is, after all, a particular satisfaction in coming home knowing you saw everything. But somewhere along the way, travel culture became strangely obsessed with productivity.
To Do for Day 4!
Wake up for the sunrise.
Climb the mountain.
Visit seven attractions.
Have lunch at three cafés.
Find the hidden gem.
Watch the sunset.
Visit the night market.
Sleep.
Repeat.
We have somehow taken the logic of the workday and packed it into our holidays. Even leisure needs an itinerary now, and I began wondering: what if I didn't do any of it?
What if I sat beside a river for two hours?
What if I watched people cross a bridge?
What if I read half a book and never finished it?
What if I stayed in because it rained?
What if I missed a sightseeing opportunity because I was having a particularly good conversation?
What if an afternoon simply happened?
The privilege of having nowhere to be
As I began travelling more, I also started thinking about leisure differently.
Especially as a woman. There is something strangely uncomfortable about a woman doing nothing. If she's sitting around, she should be working. If she's resting, she should have a reason. If she's taking a break, she should be making the most of it.
We are taught to organise, achieve, produce, care and keep moving. Even our holidays can become extensions of the same routine, but rest doesn't always need to be earned through exhaustion. Doing nothing does not necessarily mean wasting time. Sometimes, doing nothing is how you begin noticing where you are. I remember how different it felt in Himachal to have a Sunday afternoon that had no particular purpose. There was no pressure to turn it into an experience. No need to make it productive. I could walk, sit, read, watch the weather change or simply stare at a hillside. It was a small thing but it felt like a privilege. Not necessarily the financial kind. The privilege of having time that belonged entirely to you.
My Slow Travel Philosophy 1: Leisure is not luxury
This is an important distinction for me. When I talk about this slow travel philosophy, I am not talking about luxury travel.
An infinity pool overlooking a mountain can be beautiful. A five-star resort can be wonderful. But that isn't what I mean when I say leisure.
Luxury is often something money can buy.
Leisure, to me, is the ability to stop.
To have an hour that doesn't need to be productive. To take the longer road because you have nowhere urgent to be. To sit somewhere without feeling guilty about it. Some of my favourite travel stories have cost almost nothing: probably hitchhiking, a tiring walk, a cup of kadak chai, sitting outside a homestay while it rains, sharing an auto, watching a town wake up.
My Slow Travel Philosophy 2: Let the place happen around you
The best travel memories aren't always the spectacular ones.
Sometimes they are almost invisible. like the shopkeeper making making spicy maggi, the smell of wood smoke somewhere down the lane or a bus conductor calling out a stop. These moments rarely make it onto a "10 things to do" list. But they are often the things that make a destination feel lived in rather than visited, this is why I have become less interested in collecting destinations and more interested in inhabiting them, even briefly.
My Slow Travel Philosophy 3: You don't have to travel like me
And I think this needs saying. I am not saying travel like me, nobody can tell you how to travel. You might love luxury hotels. You might hate buses. You might want to wake up at four in the morning and climb every mountain in sight. You might want to spend your entire holiday beside a pool with a book.
You might travel alone.
You might travel with twelve people and a spreadsheet.
You might want all of it.
Travel is deeply personal. Your budget matters. Your comfort matters. Your body, safety, interests and circumstances matter. Slow travel shouldn't become another set of rules travellers feel guilty about breaking.
For me, it is simply an invitation to leave some room.
Room for a place to surprise you.
Room for plans to change.
Room for an ordinary afternoon.
Room for getting slightly lost.
Room for doing nothing.
This is the kind of travel I take upon.
This is what I want Sunset in my backpack to be about.
Not travel as a checklist. Not travel as luxury. Not even slow travel as a perfectly curated aesthetic.
But travel that is curious, rooted, responsible and unhurried. Travel that sometimes takes you somewhere new—and sometimes brings you back to the same corner shop for the 7th time to eat that one meal you loved. I know there is plenty to explore, there always will be, but we don't have to rush. Because, the most meaningful thing we can do while travelling is nothing at all.
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