Her Tao of Travel
Every bit the intrepid traveller, actor Sobhita Dhulipala finds in her trips both joy and wisdom
Q. You started travelling as a backpacker. Is there anything about that footloose life you miss?
It’s been about six years since I backpacked but because that was the language I learned how to travel in, backpacking still informs how I explore a place. I would mostly travel solo. All I’d carry is a little rucksack with basic supplies, figuring out each day as it came. I still seek from travel the same experience: a dialogue with a place, its people, with its culture and food. I like submitting to the place.
Q. How gratifying is travelling solo? Do you not worry that solitude will give way to loneliness? I’ve always been very comfortable being by myself and travel only made that richer. Everybody, I feel, must travel solo at least once, to experience who they are. Besides, I feel like loneliness often gets written off as such a horrid, black, dark thing. We must endure all kinds of emotions. The only way is through.
Q. Would it be fair to assume that travel for you is also a philosophical experience?
I feel all experiences can be meaningful, if you have the courage to immerse yourself in them. Also, I think travel definitely makes you more empathetic because you see so much more than your own life. You’re placed in situations that are completely new and that makes people more supple. In that sense, it is a philosophical experience. The approach is where it’s at; the sincerity to be where you are, wholly.
Q. Are you fastidious about documenting your journeys? How many photos do you take? I am a very visual person. I used to love taking pictures, but now we live in a time when social media is constantly churning out images of everybody’s whereabouts. As a result, you feel little desire left to showcase yours—it doesn’t feel as sacred or special to reveal. People are constantly ‘excited by the exciting’. What means a lot to you might not mean a lot to them, so I try to not showcase my pictures.
Q. Could you recommend three Indian summer destinations to our readers?
First, there are the beautiful hill stations of Uttarakhand and Himachal. Then you have the Nilgiris—places like Kodaikanal, Ooty, Coonoor. And then, of course, you have the Northeast. That entire frontier is largely unexplored. This year or maybe the next, I’ll first go to Meghalaya and from there to the Sundarbans. I want to go there in the monsoon, when the rains are crazy.
—with Shreevatsa Nevatia