Me, My Mom & My Boyfriend: An Indian Girl's Account Of A Road Trip She Would Never Forget

Up until a few weeks ago, the concept of a girl taking her boyfriend to a family vacation seemed like something that could only exist in Hollywood films, at least to me. But my most recent trip changed that perception. If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you know that I recently came back from a trip to Dalhousie that I took with my mom, brother, and boyfriend.

Let me give you a brief background. I’m an Indian girl of 26 and I have been dating my guy for over a year now. My mom knows about the relationship and gets along pretty well with him, but she’d be more comfortable if I just got married instead of going through the motions of “dating”.

Now that you’re all caught up, let’s get on with the story of how we achieved this seemingly-impossible feat in the Indian subcontinent.

The decision

The idea for this trip honestly came out of nowhere. It happened on a whim and my boyfriend was the one to suggest it! One brave dude, right? I thought so! We were actually picking the destination for our next trip together when my mom called and it suddenly struck him that we could take her along! I murmured cuss words under my breath, but he managed to convince me after a few attempts.

With that out of the way, we proceeded to pick the destination of choice. Now since it wasn’t just going to be the two of us, we needed a place all of us were comfortable with and which wasn’t too long a distance for mom. So, we ended up zeroing in on Amritsar, which didn’t work out in the end, because of accommodation issues. Hence, Dalhousie.

Getting my mom on board

Once we were comfortable with the whole scenario and I was convinced that this was a good idea, I picked up the phone and called my mom. I was actually pretty nervous, worrying she was going to shut me down and then the entire trip would be cancelled. But the opposite happened and she got quite excited at the idea. To be honest, her excitement fluctuated a lot in the one-month period leading up to the trip, but in the end all worked out. ‘

My brother joins in

My mom has this thing of travelling with me and my brother, which she tries to do every chance she gets. So this time as well, as I was about to put down the phone, she cheekily suggested we invite my brother too. Since we were already on a roll, I said why not.

Game plan

Once everyone was on board – me, my brother, my mother, and my boyfriend – our next concern was the accommodation. Now, after agreeing to go on this weird trip, we laid down some ground rules:

1. My extended family doesn’t know about my relationship and it was to be kept that way till the unforeseen future, or else I would have to face unnecessary shaadi pressure. This meant no sharing of photos or videos (which is also why I’m not sharing personal photos in the article).

2. My mom's inclusion in the journey was to kept even more of a top secret than my relationship, mostly because of things related to this samaaj.

You can imagine how difficult this was in itself, but on top of that we booked our accommodation in an Army guest room, while keeping it a secret from “society”. Once this was done, however, we got in touch with people at our destination, planned our route, and got ready for the journey.

Hiccups along the way

Just a week before the actual trip, my brother had to travel for work, mom sort of fell ill, and heavy landslides were reported in the area around Dalhousie. We feared this would mean the end of the journey and that we wouldn’t end up going, but somehow all seemed to work out in the end.

The journey

The night before the trip, we all camped at my mom’s place so that we could leave super early. Everything went smoothly, we woke up on time, left Delhi and even reached the place quite within the estimated time period. It started raining on the route and that’s when my mom decided to get behind the wheel and drive down. She drove from Murthal to Pathankot, singing at the top of her voice the whole time.

Our time there

Thankfully, both my mom and my brother had spent time with my boyfriend earlier. So there was that basic comfort zone. But since they had never really stayed together in the same space for more than a few hours, I was concerned about them getting along on a daily basis. However, a lot of the inhibitions were shed during the initial journey.

Once there, my brother and boyfriend camped in one room while my mom and I took the other. And given my mom and brother’s workout and meditation schedules, we also ended up getting quite a bit of alone-time to discuss anything that we needed to take care of or if anything was bothering us.

I was surprised at how well-rounded the trip turned out to be that too without any major hiccups, except of the occasional health issues my mom had. Everyone worked to take care of the others and I think I fell more in love with all of them.