Why 2026 is the Year to Visit India | Divia Thani

0:00The best trips are really for me the ones where you're confronted by these things that you don't necessarily know what to do with in that moment. And as we're flying over, all I'm looking at are trees. And I'm like, where are all the skyscrapers? Where am I going? Why? Like, where am I? Is this America? It's so hard to go somewhere and feel like, oh my God, I feel like I'm the first person to be here. And it is such a privilege to have that feeling. And in Saudi, you have that feeling over and over and over again. Bradford has one taxi. And Bob doesn't work on Sundays. you sort of sometimes need a witness to be there and just take that moment in with you so that you can both look back five years later and say wasn't that the most amazing evening of our lives welcome to travel secrets with me tanya rose the podcast sharing wisdom for fellow travelers each week i ask my guests to reveal their six travel secrets and the holidays and adventures that surround them

1:09Today my guest is my friend the divine Divya Tahani, global editorial director of Condé Nast Traveller and you oversee publications in seven countries. Eight technically eight regions. We just launched Germany last year so that brings it to eight. Eight and you are the youngest editor that they have ever had at Condé Nast. Yes, although I have to confess that was a while ago. I should probably try and scrape that off the internet. I think you should absolutely claim it or you were the first youngest director or something like that. You have probably traveled more than most of the people on this travel podcast, even including myself.

1:49And I live on an airplane. So I cannot wait to hear your travel secrets. Well, I've heard many of your episodes and I think I have stiff competition. Thank you. It's just so lovely to have you here. And before we get into your travel secrets, maybe you can just tell us a little bit about yourself and how travel has impacted the person you've become. Oh, goodness. How do I start? I've never known a life without travel. And it goes back to where my family actually comes from. So we come from a province. I'm Indian origin. But where we come from, we're Sindhi. And we come from a province called Sindh.

2:28And during the partition of India in 1947, that particular area went to Pakistan. And my family had to make their way over from Pakistan to India at the time. And, you know, it's probably the darkest period of Indian history because of the violence that surrounded the partition and the numbers of people that were moving across borders at the time. And it was absolutely dreadful. and so basically they showed up a lot of the sindhis showed up to india with nothing but the clothes on their backs and had to start from scratch they left their beautiful homes the empires that they might have built their their families their friends their neighbors um all of it all of their possessions and when they moved over to india they essentially because they didn't really have roots there um they took jobs wherever they got jobs anywhere in the world and because they had no capital, they basically became traitors.

3:29And so my mom's side of the family has all ended up in the Far East, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in Indonesia, where my mom grew up. And my father's side of the family made their way to the Caribbean. And so they're all across all of these beautiful islands in the Caribbean. And after I was born, my father moved from India to Africa, to Nigeria, where he lived for about 20 years. And so growing up, I had very little family in India itself. And for us, travel was not really about going to see these beautiful places. It was really about going to see our own family. And it was really about spending time with people that, you know, had had for all of these reasons lived very far from each other and couldn't get together as often as um as they would like and obviously these are very different times and talking about the 80s where people didn't jump on a plane every weekend the way that we are able to do now um and so for me travel was integral to my life but it was not necessarily in the same way it wasn't really it wasn't going on holiday no it was it was about going to meet your people and along the way you did fabulous things and I actually spent um I think I spent most of my summers in London actually because we would go to Nigeria to see my dad and then we would end up in London for the summer and then we'd sometimes take in another destination in Europe.

4:58I remember going to Malta but also I have a lot of my mom's family. They're just everywhere. It's actually it's funny but we always joke you can you can throw a dart anywhere in the globe and you'll find the Sindhi there and they've probably been there for 50 years and very sort of localized and acclimatized to where they are. So I guess for me, travel has just always been a big part of my life. And when I talk about it now, it feels, you know, it seems natural that I've found a life in travel, but it really wasn't growing up. I never thought that I would do anything like that. I sort of took it for granted, I think, a little bit.

5:34And now I just feel like it was, I was so lucky and so fortunate. Destined. Destiny. Possibly, yes. I'm, you know, when you're born and raised in India, destiny is a big part of how you think so you're probably right absolutely and we met when you first moved to London yes we did four years now is it four years it's almost four years now yes how amazing and you were the editor of Condé Nast Traveler in I was so I um I started off at Vogue which is the same company of course um uh when Vogue was coming to India I was part of that launch team and I was very, very junior. And three years later when they decided to bring Traveler to India, my MD at the time asked me to work on a sort of pilot proposal and then when it was approved, he called me into his office and said, you know, you should take this, you should run it.

6:29And I looked at him and I was very confused because I, you know, I'd been in publishing. I'd been on the fashion side of things, arts, culture, food. And I was like, but I don't want to do a travel magazine. I don't read travel magazines. And he looked at me and he said, well, then make a magazine that you really want to read. Make a travel magazine that you'd love to read. And it was very kind of him to give me that sort of autonomy. And I really took that to heart. And I think for me, what it meant at the time was that I sort of thought about travel magazines and I thought that they were quite static.

7:06And I, you know, we love telling travel stories, but really how many people want to listen to them? I always wonder about that when you're at a party and you're sort of regaling people with all of these stories and photos. And sometimes I sort of wonder, does anyone really want to hear this? And so I thought, how do I make something that people are going to find relevant and timely and has the sort of urgency and the sexiness of a fashion magazine, which is where I was coming from, but was able to go into all of the things that I loved because for me, I love fashion as I know you do, but it's one thing that I love.

7:42But I'm also very passionate about art and very passionate about food and very passionate about craft and things like that. And travel gave me a sort of umbrella to look at all of these different things through the lens of a traveler and to me that has still been the sort of the way that I think about travel now I think that I've been very lucky to have you know a brand that is so much at the intersection of travel and culture and lifestyle and style and art and all of these things that I love so much and so for me that was just the direction that I wanted to take the brand and I did that for about 10 years and then in 2020 which was our 10th anniversary not the best time to celebrate a travel magazine in 2020 for obvious reasons travel had come to a complete standstill and I really wondered if I would ever go back to work again there was a point where I wondered if we'd all get on planes ever again and at the end of that year is when Conde Nast as a company completely changed the way that they worked and the structure of the entire business.

8:56And as a result of that, I was moved into a global role where I now oversee all of our editions, of which we have eight. So we have the US and the UK, We have Spain, Italy, Germany, the Middle East, India, and China. And so I'm very lucky to have amazing editors in all of these places that I get to work with every day. But it's really wonderful. It's the greatest privilege, I think, traveling and living in this world. Well, you've created an amazing magazine that everybody does want to read. Oh, thank you. And also the digital footprint is really amazing as well. It is, it is. And it's been really exciting to work on that parallel and then to have, you know, now, of course, there's so much more.

9:43There's so much social that you do. There's so much video that you do. Events for us has become a huge opportunity. You know, we're sort of doing all of these very different things that, but the crux of it, and I think the joy of it and the relevance of it. And I think why people love it still is very much coming from the magazine and from that print side. And we're very lucky because not all magazines have been that fortunate and sort of, you know, digital has taken over so much of their readership. But with Travelo, touch wood, I'm very superstitious, with Travelo, we've been very lucky because we still have a very sizable print audience that is not going down in any of our markets.

10:28but we're able to add all of these new avenues and platforms where more people can discover us and younger people can discover us and people that don't know the brand or that maybe cannot afford all of the fabulous hotels that we write about and that you represent are still able to find incredible offerings and incredible stories and places for them to go and it's just made the world so much larger for us in a way and it's been great fun. Thank you for watching Travel secrets. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I'm enjoying doing it. Please take a second and subscribe now. Well, I'm going to now ask you about your travel secrets, which will be really hard for you to pin down specifics, but we're going to try.

11:09Let's try. So what is the number one destination you think everyone should go to once in their lifetime? I might sound biased, but I have to say that it is India, without a doubt for me. I think that if you are a traveler and if you are someone that and there's different phases and different kinds of travelers so there's no there's no judgment at all here um I'm a big fan of sort of you know the what we call the fly and flop as well sometimes I just need a break and an escape on a beautiful beach but I think if you are a traveler and if you genuinely believe that travel has the potential to change the way that you think and that some places just do that to you um and India is not necessarily an easy trip um a lot of people struggle with it a lot of people um have never seen the the juxtaposition of everything that we have and you see it continuously always wherever you go wherever you go you'll see incredible wealth and history and tradition and culture but you will see the absolutely opposite side of that everywhere you go as well and it can be very unsettling for people but the truth is that the the older I get perhaps I think the beauty of travel is less than what you're seeing outside and more of what it does to you on the inside how you feel how you feel how you process it how it shifts the way that you think about something how it changes the way that an idea that you've had in your head always about the way people live or the way people should live or the way that you've lived.

12:47And the best trips are really, for me, the ones where you're confronted by these things that you don't necessarily know what to do with in that moment. And India, for me, is just one of those places where the soul of it is just so immense. And it is, you know, we talk about immersive travel and the truth is you know we try and and create these amazing experiences for people in so many places so that they can feel that they're having a really authentic and immersive experience and in India you just have to show up yeah you just have to get off the plane and you're in it you can't you can't not be in it you you don't have a choice and you um to me that's just that's extraordinary and there's very few places to me in the world that have the ability to do that.

13:34I love Africa. I love very many different parts of it. And I felt a similar way when I got to South Africa for the first time. I landed and I just thought, the energy, there's something in this place. And I felt something inside of me shift. And it doesn't necessarily come to you right away. It could come to you days later or weeks later or months and years later but I think places that have the ability to really transform the way that you think um and feel and the way that you live in the world I that's the best part of traveling for me that's I agree with both of those things with that's how I felt when I went to India my sister got married there she married an Indian gentleman and then when I went to Johannesburg for the first time I actually it was quite difficult because you'd see the wealth and then you'd see the townships And they're so close to each other.

14:24Absolutely. And there was quite a lot of violence at the time when I first went there. And I actually thought, well, I'm not surprised really. You know, you're seeing this amazing wealth, but it's amazing the way that they do actually now run side by side. They do. And it really is an experience. It is. And, you know, there's something about, you know, I've lived in a few different places and there's so many places where these sort of gated communities and these sort of bubbles have become the way that we live. And you can sort of almost separate yourself from the rest of the world outside. And in places like South Africa and in places like India, and South Africa also, there are places where I think you can be quite cut off.

15:07But in India, that simply does not exist. You know, I live in India on a street also known in some capacity as sort of Millionaire's Row or Millionaire Street or whatever it's called. And the richest families in the country have these incredible homes on this street. And I live in a very small sort of simple building in an apartment. And there's all kinds. There's all kinds on that street. And right next to that street are places where people are not living grand lives at all. They're living extremely humble, very sort of makeshift. And it is extremely uncomfortable. um of course when you're born in you know when you live there you kind of come to terms with it and you sort of find a way to live within that and you do your own you know you have ways in which you're supporting these people and um you know it's it doesn't it sits heavily but I can imagine the shock of someone coming from somewhere far away who's never seen that before and so I completely appreciate the fact that people find it I tell you what I found really really shocking but funnily shocking was when I went to India, it was the train.

16:17The train journey was the most extraordinary thing. So we went to Dirudun, which is where my sister got married outside Dirudun, up in the Himalayas. But that train journey was the most extraordinary. People getting off the train, on the train, some of the people begging, coming on to get the food and everything. People on the top of the train, hanging over the train. It was like, oh my goodness. The trains in India like they're just like they're just mad and their journeys in themselves completely um there's a whole life on the train you know even if you look at at mumbai which is the city that i that i'm from my hometown and we have the you know the mumbai local trains that really take millions of people every single day they're way beyond the capacity of what they should be taking but millions they're the lifeline of the city when the trains come to a halt the city comes to a stop and um and that tends to happen once a year in the monsens but um when you're on that train you see every part of a person's life there's there's girls putting their makeup on and getting their hair done on the train as they make their way to college you have people that are making things and selling things on the way back and this is the most extraordinary thing they're so crowded on the way back you will have all of these women who spent the day in the office went to the market bought all of their veggies, not cutting them on the train ride home so that they can cook as soon as they get home.

17:39And it's incredible to see all of the things that happen on an Indian train. It really is. It really is. It's extraordinary. There's no rules like it. I mean, there's so many things I could ask you about India. Where's the best place you should go or, you know, restaurants or markets or anything. But it's such a big topic. And it might even be in the next question. So I might come back to it to get your top travel tip in India. What is your most unexpected travel experience? This is a bit of a strange one. But when I was 17, I went to college in America. And I went on a scholarship. And I was, at the time, I wanted to study literature and also genetics.

18:26And I, yes. In my mind, they're very closely related. I don't know. But when I was looking at schools, and this is, you know, I was in India, I didn't have the internet, you know, it was all very sort of, it was very different to the way things are now. And I had this big, thick book that told you what schools offered which programs. And on the basis of that, I applied to a bunch of schools, one of them being the University of Pittsburgh, which had very highly ranked programs in both of them. And so I applied, I got in, I got a scholarship and I said this is great but I was deciding between that and another school and somebody said to me get on the phone to an admissions officer and tell him that you need a bit more money and see if they give you any more money and so I did that and mind you at the time when I was calling it was a dollar a minute on the phone and so I'm I'm on weight and I'm so I'm on hold and I'm sort of thinking oh my god this is costing me 50 pounds stress me out the call is going to be so expensive.

19:29I'm not going to be able to go to college at all. And I get on the phone to this admissions counselor and he says, he has me wait. And then he comes back and says, if you go to a branch campus of the school, I can give you$5 ,000 more. And I said, done, I'll take it. I had no idea where I was going. Turns out it's a town called Bradford, Pennsylvania. It is the home of the Zippo lighter. That is its claim to fame. It is a town of about 10 ,000 people, maybe. The school was about 1 ,000, maybe 1 ,200. And I remember getting on a flight. And mind you, I'm a big city girl. I've only ever traveled to places, to very big cities.

20:12You know, I had never been anywhere that was, I don't know, less than 5 million people. And I get to Pittsburgh. There's one flight a day or maybe a few times a week that takes you to Bradford, Pennsylvania. And as we're flying, and mind you, all I know of America is Manhattan. I don't know anything aside from Manhattan. I didn't know anything in America was not Manhattan. And so I'm flying in this plane that was maybe an eight-seater. My two suitcases are the biggest things these people have ever seen. And as we're flying over, all I'm looking at are trees. And I'm like, where are all the skyscrapers?

20:50where am I going why why like where am I is this America and we get off and it's a Sunday and I'll never forget this and we get off and the the airport is less than the size of this beautiful suite at the peninsula that we're at and um I take my bags off of the plane literally and um I'm like well how do I where is the how do I how do I get to school and this very lovely couple who was on the flight with me say oh well Bradford has one taxi and Bob doesn't work on Sundays and it's literally what I ended up in so this very lovely couple decides that they're going to be so kind and give me a ride to the school campus and the entire time I'm driving by and I just see these homes that I've never seen before all of these houses with the American flags outside and we're just driving through these woods it's a very sort of rural part of Pennsylvania and I'm not kidding you I had my hand on the door the entire time on the handle because all in my head all I was thinking of was all of those movies I'd seen in America and I thought what if they're serial killers what if this is how I did what if this is it for me and it was just the most ridiculous experience I have to say I graduated very early I ended up studying very hard um so that I could I could finish up sooner and I graduated in about two and a half years or something um and then I moved to Pittsburgh and went to the main campus just so I could sort of feel like I was having a bit of a normal experience but those two and a half years that I spent in Bradford I I have to say, have to be the weirdest travel experience I've ever had because it was so completely out of my comfort zone.

22:38And it was just not the sort of place I ever knew existed. I will say in retrospect, it was definitely difficult for me when I was there. But in retrospect, I'm so happy that I ended up there because I sort of feel like I've had a chance to understand the U.S. in a way that I don't think I would have if I went to New York or California or Boston or wherever. Which is not really the U.S. No and it's very different and I think having that opportunity to meet all of these people and really understand where they're coming from and understand the sort of perspective that you know today we're sort of looking at America and wondering you know what's happening and I feel like I kind of get it because I had you know Bradford was like you know like I said it's it's the home of the Zippo lighter, but it used to be a very rich town at one point.

23:28Sort of oil was a big thing and factories were a big thing. And so when you, when you think about that and you see how things have gone for a town like that, you sort of kind of understand how we've ended up where we have. But I have been back once since then. It's not necessarily a place I recommend to travelers, but I do think Pittsburgh, on the other hand, I find to be a very underrated city in America. And I absolutely love it. Actually, I was going to ask you, what's your most underrated or overrated travel secret? So Pittsburgh is underrated. Pittsburgh is definitely underrated. It's such a great city.

24:04It's really livable. It's so green. It has all of these parks. It's where these three rivers meet. And it's just the most beautiful, beautiful area. And again, used to be a steel town and all of these old sort of industrial outposts have now been completely converted into very exciting restaurants and bars and galleries and museums. And, you know, the anti-war world museum is there. It's got so many universities and colleges that it has an amazing number of young people that are doing cool things. And so, yeah, I really, I really do. I really do like it. I don't know that that was my pick that I intended to talk about for the most underrated place.

24:47But, um, but I do really, I do really think that it doesn't get its due. Um, and so I, you know, I, I keep joking to my, my American team. I'm like, we have to do a big story on Pittsburgh and they all sort of veto me, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure that it's, I'm gonna make sure that, that we do it at some point. What was your other one that you were thinking of? You know, the place that really blew me away and that I just, I can't stop talking about it, honestly is Saudi Arabia and I don't know if you've been. I haven't and I absolutely want to go. It is extraordinary and I went I've been two or three times now and Alula which is you know the one that the area that I think most people know and talk about is even more extraordinary than any of the images that you've seen it is a part of the country that has been completely untouched and that's the amazing thing about Saudi is that it's actually a very very large country and most of it has not been opened up not even to locals there's many parts of it where they've never been and um when you the first time I went to actually went to Neom yeah which is this you know obviously mega development um neom itself is the size of belgium is it really it's it's huge and um obviously they had very ambitious plans for it those have been pulled back now but it's still this incredible experiment in building a city that is completely sustainable that really thinks very hard about um what it means to build something from scratch and therefore to build it the right way and how do you make sure that people are very close to a park and to a school and to their place of employment and to their homes and to their families and it's it's a really it's an incredible sort of um project for in in urban design it's very sort of progressive thinking um but as you are driving through it there's nothing there there's no roads there's very few roads that have been built there's there's no street sign there's no streets there's definitely no street signs but what was amazing is it had this incredible guide um he was about 19 or 20 um saudi local and as we're driving through just beautiful red sand we're just driving through the desert and he stops at these incredible rock formations and he goes i call this my grandfather because if you look at it this way this is his nose and this is what he looks like and he looked just like this and he had this amazing beard if you look at it and I was like this is fantastic and two days later we're with a different guide and he pulls up to some another incredible rock formation he goes I call this my grandfather and it's like this place is amazing it's literally like you feel like you're in some sort of prehistoric time and that you're discovering things for the first time and I think today in the world of travel it is so difficult to find that it's so hard to go somewhere and feel like oh my god i feel like i'm the first person yeah to be here and it is such a privilege to have that feeling and in saudi you have that feeling over and over and over again and then alola when you when you're there and you sort of walk through this incredible landscape and the most gorgeous sunsets you've ever seen just golden sun on this red sand um it's it's absolutely stunning and you have these inscriptions that are at least 2 000 years old and they're just there they're just there they're not in in enclosed in a glass case they're not you know there's not lines of people there's not tickets that you're buying it's just you're just wandering through history and it's extraordinary you know they've excavated these homes that are at least 800 years old and then bits of them are slowly being taken over by locals and one of them is a bookstore and one of them is a jewelry store and one of them was this beautiful store that sold dates and every date was in this beautiful sort of canister glass canister and it was like it's like a piece of jewelry and you saw the entire store was about 12 or 16 dates and in sort of a big U and it was honestly that's how you look at high jewelry It was absolutely amazing.

29:15I think the way that they think about architecture and the way that they're thinking about how to really showcase what is inherent to them, what is indigenous to them, what is natural to them, it's extraordinary. You know, there's very few places where tourism is starting from scratch now. And Saudi is one of those places. And so they have the opportunity to start from zero. and the question is when you have the ability to start from scratch what are you going to do what direction are you going to take and I was just blown away by the way that they were thinking about the environment and sustainability the way that they were thinking about their locals you know how is this going to impact our local population for the better how is how are we going to make sure that the impact of tourism is a positive impact um and so you know Saudi gets You know, Saudi gets a lot of negative press.

30:09But really, and that's the amazing thing about travel, is that you go there and all of a sudden you think about it in a completely different way. And they are going to have to work on the things that they get the bad press about. But I think they are. I mean, women are so much, so able now to do things. Oh my goodness. You know, that was one of my favorite parts about just sort of being in Saudi is that the few times that I've been, And every time at some point I've been sitting in a restaurant or in a cafe and these women will come up to me and start chatting. And they're so happy to have visitors.

30:43They're so happy to have tourists. They're so warm. They're so welcoming. They're so friendly. And it's not coming from, they're not trained to do this. It's not a greedy thing. No, not at all. They're just so happy to share their culture and they're just so happy to have the ability to have people there so that they can see what the lives are really like of people because they feel very misunderstood um and they sort of laugh sometimes about the things that we ask them because you know we've read the same things that everyone else has read in the western press and um and they just you know very often they're laughing it off and they're saying this is not the reality of our lives and so it really is it's one of those places where i think um you really do need to go and make up your own mind once you've had some and you need to read the condenas Traveler article about it.

31:28Yes, we do. Tariq said what a beautiful piece on Alola, which I think is online. But we cover Saudi quite a bit. I mean, to be honest, this year's hot list issue, you know, Saudi was on the cover of both the US and the UK editions and different hotels because they're just so absolutely stunning and beautiful. Let's talk about food and drink. It's so much part of travel. It's so much part of our lives. What do you like eating? Where do you like eating? Where's your best meal that you've ever had? Let's just talk generally about food and drink and travel. Oh God, I'm obsessed with food to a very, I would say unhealthy, unhealthy limit.

32:06I just, I travel to eat. That's my, that's my big thing. I cannot enjoy a place if the food is not great. If I have one bad meal, I'm just in a really bad mood. Or if you skip a meal. Never. Oh my goodness. never um I I just really love it I've always been a big big food person I used to you know I used to review restaurants a lot I used to work for time out at one point um and I just you know it's it's a big it's a big part of travel for me um and it's a big reason why I choose to go where I go is the food so I have I have lots of lots of things we can talk about food but I think the thing that's exciting me now um about food is it's a bit different to what i i was enjoying i would say even maybe five six years ago um where i was really sort of enjoying these modern interpretations of um of traditional sort of cuisine and that you know has become a big thing and i and i absolutely love it some great restaurants in london that are doing it you know especially if you look at if you think about um west african food and the sort of modern interpretations of it that we're seeing in london i think are far beyond anything i've seen anywhere else um you know places like ikowi and just doing the most incredible food um and it's a chance to you know food to me is the is the easiest gateway into a different culture um the simplest way to have someone become curious about a place is to have them eat something that's delicious and if it's tasty they don't really care about the politics of the place right so that's why i think food is so good at sort of building bridges between people as well um and so i think that's that's very exciting but now for me i'm sort of less into the modern interpretations and just more into into the home style um food of a place really sort of discovering regional cuisines from different places and the thing that um that i get even more excited about is when i can actually see everything i know we say farm to table but people have taken it to an absolutely incredible um extent in terms of really thinking very local very seasonal looking at ingredients that are very indigenous things that are forgotten you know we think about these sort of forgotten grains and ancient grains and millets that that over the years because of the way our agricultural systems have developed all over the world.

34:33We've lost so much of that amazing stuff that our ancestors used to eat. And there's incredible chefs all over the world that are really being driven by this. All the way from, you know, the Massimo Bitoras of the world to people that are, you know, literally street food. And street food for me is, again, very, very exciting. I feel like I'm excited about all of it, really. I'm not doing a very good job here of choosing one. but um street food for me is also just such an incredible way of understanding a place and sort of understanding what life is like in that place and you know I think about um Vietnam and the street markets in Vietnam and um at night how these how these areas just absolutely come to life with people just outside eating and drinking and um the food is hot and spicy and it's humid and it's hot outside and it all just seems to go together and it's just you know it's mad and you're sitting there with you know fires burning and you're sweating and you're eating this amazing food um and those are those are the days that I I remember the best you know I love restaurants absolutely love restaurants as well for for everything that they are but I also really love street food I think it's such a part now of travel and so many people who have been on the podcast or whatever talk about going to the local market like Ruthie Rogers was talking about the Venice market just to see what there is that day, the fresh fish that's coming in.

35:59And that really helps you get under the skin of that destination, doesn't it? Oh, completely. I mean, I think about even Tokyo and the fish market and all of that. But I have to say, I'm also just a big fan of going to like the local supermarket, the local, whatever the 7-Eleven sort of equivalent is in all of these places, because you learn so much about a place from just sort of wandering through those shelves and seeing what people like and what sort of flavors are really rising to the top of things and how are these big brands localizing things. It's such an, you know, it's an anthropological sort of sociological fun thing to do.

36:35I think it's just wandering through these aisles. You know, when I didn't live in London and I used to come here as a kid, I remember that we would, you know, we'd go to Harrods and we'd, you know, shop for the whole year in that summer. in that summer I remember very clearly um tagging along with my mom and just crying why couldn't we just stop and sit in the park and she'd be on a mission to shop um but I remember Marks and Spencers for me as a kid felt like it felt like this you know wonderland because I had never seen these things before um I only ever read about them in these sort of Enid Blyton books and And I remember, actually, I remember this very clearly because I was obsessed with these books.

37:19And they were all about girls going to boarding school in England. Mallory Towers and St. Clair's. Yeah, absolutely. And all of these books. And I would read all of that. And they would have these midnight feasts. And they would have, I don't know, like all of these things, like tinned sardines. And all of these really weird things that as someone sitting in India, I'd never heard of them before. and I demanded from my mom one summer when we went London I said I want a picnic and I want all of these things that they talk about in the secret seven and marilu each house exactly and my mom said you're not going to like it and I said I will love it I want to go to boarding school here and she said okay why don't we do a little picnic and then you can see how you feel and I don't think I finished one thing I was gonna say tin sardines oh my goodness I don't know what they It was so romanticized in these parks.

38:11You sort of showed up here in a park with like a can opener and these tins. And it was just the worst meal I'd ever had. Yeah. So I remember that very good. That is hilarious. That's a food experience I do not recommend. That's very good. Do not try and recreate your favorite authors. Don't try. That's so good. What's your top travel tip? So I've heard many of your podcasts and I've heard many people say that they do carry on and they don't check their bags in. And I am not at all a fan of that. And I know you are not because you, like me, like to travel with a lot of different things and options.

38:48What I do always is I have, I always carry a long shop bag in my suitcase. And, you know, they fold really easily. They don't take up any space. They're so light. And anything that you buy or purchase, even if you are going with the carry-on, I feel it's the best thing to have because you can just dump all of your shopping in there, all of the things that are likely to break if you were to check them in, all of the jewelry that you might purchase, you know, things that are very delicate. And you can just sort of throw that on your carry-on and take it with you. But also the other thing that I do is I have a sort of ready, I have a ready toiletry case for my travels, which I never take anything out of unless it's to replace as a rule.

39:30Even if I run out of my moisturizer in the middle of the week, I will not open the travel case because I know it will not go back in. And so I always have that. And then I always also have another bag that's sort of one of those, I think it's probably Muji or Uniqlo, one of those packing cubes. But it has every sort of underwear I could possibly need for any trip, as well as a swimsuit and a sarong, because these are the sorts of things that I realize I always forget. you forget the perfect strapless or you forget the sort of fashion tape that's going to hold something together. And what I realized when I have that and the toiletries all sorted, I'm much more likely to get up and say, I can do it.