Forest bathing made me fall back in love with my job

This was the kind of exhaustion that built up slowly. I was working with the best in the business as a travel writer but the routine had worn me down: mentally, physically and emotionally. I quit my job, deleted the apps and tried to remember what silence felt like. I quit writing altogether. The burnout wasn’t urgent, but something felt off.

A month later, I was packing for a family trip to Madikeri, Coorg. Normally, I’d use the time to chase stories. This time, I left the pitch emails behind. If I were Ethan Hunt in a Mission: Impossible film, I’d have said ‘no’ to any mission that came my way.

Branching out

In Coorg, I spent nine out of ten days in the suite my parents had booked, cocooned in a lush coffee plantation. Travel, which had always fueled my passion for writing, now repelled me. It became more of a chore: one of the prospective risks of making your passion your work. The only time I left was when my mum convinced me to join the family to go forest bathing in Madikeri’s thriving coffee estates. “Come for the vitamin D,” she said. I didn’t expect much.

It’s strange how things open up when you stop trying to optimise every moment. As a travel writer, I’d been trained to look for the highlights, to find the hook. But that day in Coorg, with no agenda, I felt something change.

Following the path, not the plan

We walked for over an hour and I remembered why I pursued travel writing in the first place. Silver oak trees arched above us. The path was damp, slippery and alive. The Japanese call this Shinrin–yoku, also known as forest bathing, only I was not expecting to encounter it in Coorg.

I watched as my dad chatted with our guide over Arabica beans, my mum collected fallen avocados and my sisters battled bugs. I was finally travelling the way I always meant to. Instead of chasing moments, I was inside them. A stray dog started following us. I was scared at first. But the deeper we went into the forest, the more I stayed close to it. We kept walking together, like we’d done this before. Just as the rain stopped, we heard the sharp call of the rare Malabar Grey Hornbill. We spotted it a few minutes later as it flew by.

Photo: Mishri, Arundhati and Rhea Mulani

I didn’t feel the need to make sense of it all. And perhaps that’s why my senses felt awakened, for the first time, in a long time.