Why we changed our minds about India

There were small bits Jax enjoyed in the middle of it. Sitting in the tuk tuk with the wind on his face. Watching everything rush past without needing to process it all. He liked those moving moments more than the stops.

But he also started saying, very directly, that he didn’t want to come back. Not in a dramatic way. Just a clear preference. He didn’t like it there and didn’t see why we would return.

That sat with us more than anything else.

Because it wasn’t said once. It came up again, in different places, with the same conclusion.

We talked about as a family. Whether we were pushing through something for the sake of a plan we had made months earlier. We had year visas. We had a route planned north towards Darjeeling, then down to Goa. It was all there, waiting.

But none of us felt pulled forward.

Nepal changed the way India felt in comparison

We went from India into Nepal and it was like the volume dropped without us realising how loud it had been.

Not better or worse, just different in a way that made us notice our own reactions.

We walked more. Sat more. Talked less about logistics. We ate without overthinking every step in the same way. Jax relaxed in a way we hadn’t really seen for a couple of weeks.

And that’s where the question started properly forming.

We had return flights back into India booked from Nepal. The plan was simple. Go back, continue north, carry on the route we had designed.

But sitting there, looking at those flights, none of us wanted them.

There wasn’t a big emotional moment about it. No dramatic decision. Just a quiet agreement building over a few days that we didn’t want to go back into that same feeling again.

We started saying it out loud. What if we didn’t return.

We had already been in India for two weeks. We had done what we came to do, in a way. But more than that, nothing in us was leaning towards more time there.

The decision to leave and why we listened to it

We flew from Nepal back into Delhi, then onward to Chennai, and out of India to Malaysia. It felt structured on paper, but in reality it was just a decision being followed through.

There is a version of this where we stayed. Pushed on. Given it more time. Seen if it shifted.

We did talk about that. Whether two weeks was enough to make a call like this on a country that big and varied.

But travel with a child makes those decisions less abstract. Jax was clear in a way we couldn’t ignore. And we were not enjoying it enough to override that just for the sake of seeing more.

It felt like one of those points in long-term travel where flexibility matters more than sticking to what you planned.

Not every place is going to be for every family. That sounds obvious, but it’s different when you are in it, with flights already booked and visas already paid for.

We left with questions still sitting there. Whether we should have given it more time. Whether something would have shifted if we had stayed longer, slowed down, changed how we were travelling inside the country.

Maybe it would have. Maybe not.

We didn’t have the energy left to find out.

And that has to be allowed too.

A few honest things we would say if someone asked

• Having a driver helped practically, but didn’t change how we felt day to day
• Two weeks felt both long and not long enough at the same time
• We underestimated how constant the mental load would feel for us as parents
• Jax’s opinion mattered more here than in most places we have been
• Leaving early felt uncomfortable, but also immediately lighter

We still talk about India. Not in a simple way. More in pieces. Things we saw, things we remember clearly, things that didn’t sit right for us.

It wasn’t a place we fell in love with. And for this stage of our travels, that was enough information to move on.