Coming up with new travel tales this week, we connect with one of the talk-of-the-town actors, Vivan Bhatena, who takes us through his recent trip and his perfect family vacation.
Tejal Sinha
Actor Vivan Bhatena has been making waves with his back-to-back releases, and now one cannot stop adoring his recent family vacations to Cyprus and Dubai. While he was still on his sojourn back then, it was really kind of him to take us through his travel experience from the recent trip via telephone call.
Starting the trip with Cyprus for Nikhila’s birthday, he shares that we travel every year for her birthday, and that’s been something that’s been constant every year. “We try to go to places that we haven’t seen before and have a lovely experience, and in fact, our traveling
has also changed since Ayeina was born. We want to do everything that she wants to do. We took her to a water park; she really loves the beach and the water. We took her to as many beaches as possible. In Dubai, we took her to Lego Land and the Dolphin Arena, where we took pictures with dolphins. All the things that she wants to do have been our priorities, and then we have our one day of shopping and things we want to do, and then we meet our friends.”
Well, of course, Vivan and Nikhila make sure their little princess has the best of times during the trips. In fact, he goes on to share, “My daughter has one clear thing: wherever she goes, she wants the best, so we stay at the best property possible. We were staying at the Atlantis, The Palm. It’s one of the fantastic properties there; it’s right on the beach, and it’s a beautiful villa-type property. It’s been a fantastic service. We showed Nivaya this life,
and we wanted to show her the best of everything possible, expose her to different cultures and countries, show her different places, and educate her as much as we could. At this age, she has traveled more than any of us. And that’s the fun thing for her. We try and bring up as much exposure for her, and then she gets to talk about her trips in school; her teachers ask her about them and what she learned from them, her experience.”
Talking about Dubai, he had a really pleasant vibe there with the amazing food and beaches. “It was like we were going to a fun bay on a busy beach, and we realised how much people there love sun and water and enjoy themselves. The markets there are so beautiful, and it’s so fun to show her different things and cultures. We went to a black fen beach for her to understand why there’s a black fen and why the water is this colour.
During this holiday, we also got to meet a few of our friends in the hotel, and we interacted with locals in the restaurants to know the best places for us to visit. We unfortunately went during the heat wave, and it was extremely hot. Well, that’s one thing we have taken into account: we should go during a cooler time. And if we go right now, it’s more like a forest fire—extremely hot. Though we got heat burns, we really enjoyed the trip.”
Now something that brought another question to our mind was about the beaches in Dubai. They are not that popular, but he and his family had the best of times there. “When you go to the Palm, there’s, of course, not too much water there, but it’s very clean water on the beach. Of course the temperature was very high, so you’ll have to wait till the evening to get on the beach; otherwise, it’s extremely hot, but of course you really enjoy the water here; it’s very warm and welcoming, and if you stay at the right property, you’ll enjoy the beaches here as well.”
He even goes on to recall the dolphin show that they’d seen there and how the show brought in much more exciting exposure for his little one. “We went to this dolphin show and saw how they train them there. I don’t like encouraging these things too much, but we wanted to make Nivaya show how intelligent they are, and she was fascinated. In fact, it was the very first time that she was very quiet and staring at it. Then we took a picture, and she went and played with them a bit. She understood that it was more than just a fish and had so much intelligence, and those things were really fun to see. By the end of it, she was very delighted and was cheering for them. It was great fun for her.”
Through this trip, it completely sums up that the family are the water babies for sure, which Vivan agrees too. He even enunciates to us how, on their trips, they somehow end up having one or the other ocean experience.
As we came to an end of his travel tales of the trip, we asked him about his go-to place to get away from the work blues, and he says, “Bombay has a very special environment. We just run away for a short trip. For me, I have to travel a bit more since I’m working there, and my work really makes me travel. I shoot at some great properties and have these luxury stays. Nikhila, on the other hand, doesn’t get to travel much, so she loves to have a lot of entertainment so she can relax, though she doesn’t end up doing it. For me, going to the gym or playing volleyball brings that relaxation, and now I have started playing tennis again and getting back at it. And so we can play a sport in Bombay together that disconnects us from everything, so we get to relax.”
