Why travelling with parents is suddenly so exhausting
Ask any millennial who’s planned one
At 2 pm in Rameswaram, I’m in the lobby of a beach resort negotiating what can only be described as a soft family standoff. My mother is ready to go out, sunglasses on and bag slung over her shoulder. I’m holding a carefully planned itinerary that includes something extremely rare on family trips—an evening with nothing scheduled. “We didn’t come here to sit in the room,” she says.
What she means is obvious. We should be out doing something. What I mean is equally obvious. Please, can we rest.
By 3.30 pm, I’ve arranged a car to take her shopping and cancelled the beach walk I had imagined for the evening.
The boom in family trips
If this situation sounds familiar, it’s because multi-generational travel is booming right now. A Booking.com study found that 57% of Indian travellers planned such trips in 2025.
The reasons aren’t hard to see. Parents are healthier and travelling more after retirement, and many millennials have finally reached the stage where they can afford to organise these trips.
The same study also found that millennials now handle nearly half of family travel planning (here’s a checklist for travelling with senior parents). Baby boomers, meanwhile, are increasingly happy to hand over the logistics and say something along the lines of, “You plan. We’ll come.”
On paper, the trips promise bonding and quality time. In practice, they involve a surprising amount of negotiation. Meal timings, medication schedules, tea preferences, which floor the hotel room should be on and how far everyone is willing to walk are often drawn-out discussions or cause for friction.
Somewhere along the way, the trip organiser also becomes the unspoken trip manager, constantly coddling, diffusing, insisting and pivoting to keep everyone happy and things on course. It quickly starts feeling less and less like a vacation, especially for that person.
When the pace doesn’t match
Saloni Singh, a 38-year-old IT professional from Bengaluru, thought she had planned a fairly relaxed January trip to Rajasthan for her parents. One safari a day in Ranthambore, comfortable hotels and slow evenings around a bonfire.
It did not pan out that way. “By the second morning my father kept asking why I was making them rest like invalids. Every time I suggested downtime, it became a discussion,” she says.
This mismatch is common, says Mumbai-based family therapist Radhika Menon. “Adult children usually plan cautiously. Parents often feel this might be their big chance to see a place, so they want to fit in as much as possible,” she says.
The result is a tug-of-war over pace. Menon says the easiest compromise is often to structure the day so it still feels active without requiring too much physical effort. A morning outing followed by something slower, a drive or a café stop, which still feels like sightseeing but gives everyone a breather.
When care starts looking like interference
Another flashpoint appears when practical planning begins to feel like overmanagement and control.
Divya Sinha, a 41-year-old homemaker from Lucknow, describes her Kerala holiday with her in-laws as “a masterclass in polite resistance”. Before the trip she had done what seemed sensible and booked airport wheelchairs, checked for lifts at hotels and shortlisted restaurants that would be comfortable for older diners. “My mother-in-law kept asking why I was overdoing everything. I thought I was being helpful, but she thought I was fussing,” she says.
Menon says this kind of friction is common. “For many parents the roles start shifting around this stage of life. They’ve spent decades being the ones in charge. Suddenly, their children are organising things for them,” she says. One simple fix is to involve parents in small decisions during the trip. Choosing where to eat or whether to take a slower day can make the same arrangements feel less like management and more like collaboration.
The tiny things that matter
Then there are the small logistical crises that seem trivial but can shift the mood of an entire day.
Last winter in Coorg, Edith D’Souza from Pune found herself dealing with what she now calls “the great breakfast spiral”. Her father needs to take medication immediately after eating. The hotel breakfast service was running late. Within minutes, the entire morning had become tense. “I was coordinating with the kitchen and trying to keep everyone calm. It looked like a small delay but the stress builds very quickly,” says the 39-year-old teacher.
Moments like this rarely show up in the holiday photos. “When one person ends up doing everything, it becomes mentally exhausting. You’re constantly anticipating the next problem,” says clinical psychologist Dr Ananya Bhonsle.
Her suggestion is to share the logistics. One person handles reservations, someone else keeps track of the day’s plans, another deals with transport. It spreads the work and lowers the pressure on any one person and allows for things to run more smoothly.
Why women often end up carrying the load
There’s another pattern many families recognise. Sons often step in for payments or bookings. Daughters and daughters-in-law end up doing the less visible work of managing everything and everyone on the trip.
So they are keeping track of medication timings, noticing when a parent is getting tired, or adjusting the day’s plans before small irritations turn into arguments. Over time, that kind of constant attention begins to add up. “The reason it often goes unnoticed is because it looks like competence,” says Bhonsle.
By the fourth or fifth day, many women report the same strange kind of fatigue. The kind that comes from always being slightly on alert. D’Souza remembers returning from Coorg and needing two full days before she felt normal again. “You come back needing a holiday from the holiday,” she says.
The diplomacy of family travel
Yet, almost everyone I spoke to says they would do these trips again. The photos really are lovely, and the memories remain.
So how to keep building these memories while keeping everyone’s tempers intact? According to Menon, family travel works best when expectations are discussed early. A rough itinerary, built-in rest time and the occasional check-in during the trip can prevent small tensions from building. “It’s less about eliminating disagreements. That’s impossible in any family. It’s more about planning in a way that keeps everyone comfortable,” she says.
Back in the Rameswaram hotel lobby, the revised plan is already underway. My mother has gone shopping. I linger near the beach by myself for a few quiet minutes. The peace is technically restored. What no one sees is the running calculation in my head, like when the next meal should happen, how far the seafood restaurant is, or whether they’ll enjoy sitting on the sand for sunset.
Later that night, a cheerful photo appears on the family WhatsApp group. “Best trip ever ❤️”, someone writes. They’re not wrong. Only I know what didn’t make it into the frame.
