Travelling with a young family can be made easier if you plan in advance, say the experts. Articles and advice columns give several guidelines: Pack plenty of tasty and ‘easy’ snacks, avoid too many sugary foods and drinks to keep that uncontrollable ‘sugar rush’ at bay, be prepared with games that can be played en route, make sure you have appropriate clothes for them for the journey and for the destination ... and so on.
When we had a young family, we never got to read any such articles. I like to believe that we were too busy to notice them staring out at us from the newspapers — and not that prospective writers muddled along like we did, and now, with hindsight, have plenty of good advice to proffer.
In any case, the guidelines presume that those travelling with young children are going on a much-anticipated holiday ... but our trips were not of that variety.
We travelled frequently and we covered long distances by road and rail with our little family — but we were not holidaying. We were either going, bag and baggage, “on transfer” or we were going “home” to our parents and in both cases, we were practically shifting home and hearth.
If we were going on a posting, we had no idea what the next port of call held in store for us — but we did know that we had to unpack and settle down and get the home fires burning within the shortest possible time to ensure that the children got the food their taste buds were accustomed to, got a comfortable place to rest (other than their mother’s accommodating lap), and there were no hiccups in their lifestyle. So, for the journey and for at least a day ahead, we needed to have an ice-box of food on hand, safe drinking water, appropriate linen and mats, etc.
If we were going “home”, as well, the requirements for the journey remained almost the same because we needed the “opening” meal on our arrival.
Why, you may wonder, should this be something to worry about when we went “home”?
Well, each time we travelled, one little one had grown a year older and progressed from one type of food to another and despite all the letters that went back and forth, we were not sure that he would take to whatever was prepared for him. There could be too much chili. There could be no meat at all. There could be something that was a treat for us, like idli (steamed rice and lentil cake), that he abhorred.
The second ‘little one’ was a very large German Shepherd, who not only became more set in her ways with each passing year, but also worked herself into a state of extreme agitation when she saw the first signs of travel — and would only settle down when we reached our destination and her own dishes and her own familiar food were set in front of her. (Even if kibble had been available and affordable in those days, I’m pretty sure she would have been reared on “home-made” to keep her fit and happy.)
A journey with our two ‘children’, therefore, became something of a travelling circus: A quiet child who should have been racing around excitedly — but wasn’t. An agitated dog, who should have been sedated or muzzled or caged — but wasn’t. A trolley piled high with drinking water, food, ice-box, sleeping gear ... Two frazzled adults trotting along trying to keep the water from spilling and the ice-box from opening, one of them vowing that she wanted to go on no more journeys, but knowing full well that the whole process would be repeated a few months down the line.
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
