How to choose offbeat destinations to travel to

If you’re looking to visit major cities like Kolkata and Delhi, or tourist hotspots like Manali and Goa, you’ll find an endless stream of travel blogs and guides to help you plan your trip. Visit this Instagrammable café, take a selfie at that monument, go on a can’t-miss-out-on tour….

The same can’t be said about offbeat travel destinations because – naturally, very few people have visited them and even fewer have shared information about them online. This makes choosing offbeat destinations in India a bit confusing, and planning trips to such places doesn’t give travellers a lot of confidence.

But with Covid-19 still looming large and our itch to travel getting… uhmm.. itchier… travellers will battle with the urge to feed their wanderlust while giving safety its due importance. Choosing to visit destinations that are off the beaten track may be the only way to have the best of both worlds – skipping the crowds while taking in new sceneries. Because let’s be honest, travelling to mainstream destinations in the near future will make you a sitting duck for a Covid disaster.

I’ve found that ‘Offbeat Travel’ was a niche I could fit into well, and over the years, I’ve visited destinations in India that most people haven’t heard of. I chose to visit Pelling and Ravangla instead of Gangtok in Sikkim, the quiet town of Pollachi in the popular Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu, and mesmerizing Totam in Uttarakhand which was a few dozen kms from the in-demand destination of Jim Corbett, and Bhandardara, another small village in Maharashtra.

Here are my tips for choosing an off-beat destination to travel to in India:

Pick a destination that’s accessible from a city – When you’re in the planning phase, pick a city or town and figure out destinations that are in a 100-200 km radius of it. You will easily be able to find either private or public transport that can take you there once you land in the city. In most cases, the roads will be well developed (since they surround a city) and there will be buses and trains plying. You can do what I do and hire a self-drive car in the city so that you can explore in and around your destination at leisure while being exposed to as few people as possible. Certain destinations are difficult to get to – and while they are no doubt the most beautiful ones, attempt to visit them if you have your own transport or can rent at the nearest city. For example, fly into Bangalore or Chennai and hop on a bus/train to reach Coimbatore, from where you can find your way to Pollachi with ease. Or fly into Bangalore, rent a car and drive down to Pollachi.

Talk to locals – I wouldn’t have found the pristine white salt marshes of Dolavira if I hadn’t spoken to a local at the very commercial Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. The Rann is touted to offer tourists an out-of-the-world experience by travel magazines, blogs and articles – but anyone who’s visited will tell you how disappointing it is. Similarly with Goa, if you talk to a local, most of them would say the opposite of what is recommended by online searches and what tourists normally do in terms of visiting great restaurants, experiences, viewpoints and more.

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Research on hotels and transport – Many travellers do their research, irrespective of whether the destination is a big city or a small, remote village. But there are many like me who like to ‘wing it’ for the most part – travel with no agenda and stop when you find a good hotel or an interesting place to explore. However, when you’re travelling to remote and unheard-of destinations, researching beforehand is essential.

You may find that there’s only one hotel in your destination, and that’s all completely booked on your travel dates or has shut down. Maybe you’ll find that the hotel is extremely shady and has terrible reviews. In that case, you’ll need to book your stay a little further from your destination and travel to and from your hotel every day. During your research, if you find that there are plenty of good hotels, restaurants and public transport, then going with the flow shouldn’t be a problem. In my personal experience, you get better deals at hotels when you walk into a hotel as opposed to booking online – so use the advantage to save money while you travel.

Make use of Google Maps – Zoom in on Google Maps, spend some time looking around and you’ll never know what you find. A small island in a river that you can get to by hopping on to a ferry or maybe a temple, fortress or statue in the middle of the forest like Rabdentse Ruins, in Pelling, that should be crawling with tourists, but isn’t…

Watch YouTube and Netflix Documentaries – I looove watching food shows and documentaries and it was while watching Chef’s Table that I came across a restaurant called Faviken, run by Magnus Nilsson in a remote part of Sweden called Jamtland. This restaurant of global acclaim is set in an 18th-century grain-house, in a place where there is absolutely nothing else of tourist importance. In fact, for 6 months of the year, nothing even grows there… but you won’t believe how stunning the place is! YouTube, Netflix and even Instagram are gold mines when it comes to getting a glimpse into places you’ve never heard of before.

Go off the beaten track – Perhaps the easiest way to discover something new is to not look online at all. I’ve gotten lost on my way to a destination countless times and stumbled upon, quaint villages, temples, beautiful viewpoints and whatnot that aren’t even on the map. So many times we see signboards or a sign like ‘Waterfall’ with an arrow painted on a rock and drive past without giving it a second look. On your next trip, keep a lookout and go the extra mile to discover something unexpected. A short detour can sometimes reveal a beautiful surprise.

I find it hard to get excited about visiting popular tourist destinations, now that I’ve had a glimpse of a more authentic side of travel. It takes a little more patience, and is a tad more uncomfortable and uncertain – but it’s always worth it!

You may also like to read my last blog post which is about how to realistically save money to travel. See you soon!