Teddy Travelogues: Many Firsts For My 2 Year Old Daughter As Well For The Parents #TravelWithKids

It was almost 2 year old that we could not go anywhere on vacation after her birth. She was too young to manage while travel was the prime reason. But there were other reasons too like my wife was not prepared well to accept this challenge and I too felt that what if there is a problem when we are away from home and nobody known is around.

Any how our daughter was now 2 year old and we felt confident in moving out for a long distance for a family vacation. We decided to go to Kullu-Manali for a trip of 10 days. From Delhi to Kullu we had a flight and then we had already booked a cab for Manali straightaway after landing in Kullu. This was our daughter’s first flight and she was quite disturbed as soon as the plane started taking off. First of all it was the full flight with so many people around that created a chaos for her. And then that was it. She was unstoppably crying for next 15-20 minutes. It took a grit of us to handle her. She was actually helpless as this was her first experience in the air. Anyhow she was smiling after some time and that gave us a complete relief. But we were worried inside as this was just the beginning of the trip and we were not sure about our daughter’s behavior on hills where she was again going for the first time. We had taken special attention while selecting warm clothes for her for the low temperatures on hills.

The plan got haywire as due to bad weather the airplane had to land in Chandigarh from where we were being driven to Kullu on sharing cabs by the airlines. We knew that the little angel will not be comfortable travelling with strangers in the cab for this long distance of almost 250 odd Kilometers. Our request was granted by Airlines staff that was making these special arrangements for they were fascinated by the beautiful smile of my young kid and that was the reason for providing us an individual Sedan. The journey was quite enjoyable for my young kid. We had to stop on our way more than a couple of times to help her in getting her small portion of milk and biscuits.

Gradually it was quite late in the evening when we reached at Manali. Luckily the hotel that we had booked from Delhi was quite prestigious and known to all cabbies and hence we did not have any problem in reaching the hotel. The kid was somehow slightly irritated, may be due to the change in weather, location or a long and tiring journey. The time by when we relaxed in the hotel room after settling and before going to the hotel restaurant for dinner, she was asleep with a sweet smile on her face. Definitely the journey, with many firsts for the small child, and also a first for both of us – taking our 2 year old for the first time for this long journey, was a good learning for all of us.