The 2021 Workation Experience

Workation → Work + Vacation

I never heard this term “Workation” before covid. I knew what Digital Nomads were, but I always felt like those people are mostly freelancers. If you are working with a corporate or a company then the idea of working from exotic locations, beaches and hills isn’t for you.

August 2020, the time when India started to lift the World’s largest lockdown, and the first wave of COVID started to get phased out. This time a new wave started to rise, the wave of Workation!

Most Indian software engineer’s who used to be working out of office were working remotely from their homes in the lockdown, but when lockdown was lifted and the offices were still promoting work from home. Huge number of employees from all sorts of Age & Domain and Places started shifting their workspace from their homes to exotic and amazing locations like Himalayan Hills and the Goan Beaches.

My social media started to flood with the memories that people were sharing. After controlling my vacation craving for almost a month, I finally couldn’t resist it any more and headed to the ultimate dream work from home destination Goa!!!!

All alone, first time in Goa, first workation, first solo trip… this trip was a genuine roller coaster for me.

In Feb 2021 end, I went to Goa for my first ever solo trip and first ever workation.

GOA!

Goa is a coastal state in India, known for amazing beaches, wild parties, unique cafe culture, happening hostel life, surfing, waterfall , and I can keep on going ….

I explored the Northern part of Goa which is known for being the most happening place in India.

Vagator, Anjuna, Siolim, Morjim and Asagao are the must visit places in North Goa.

Here, you will find the happening hostel life, beautiful creek side Greek cafe’s, best bakers, lush green roads surrounded by Coconut trees both sides.

Just the feeling of driving a two wheeler late-night where the coastal breezes are all around the place soothes your soul!.

I took a solo ride from North Goa to South Goa which are about 2 hours apart. Boy that route is such a beauty. I have never experienced a highway ride that beautiful. Both sides to the highway filled with green farms and coconut trees.

South Goa is the place where you want some chill and calm vibes. It’s not much crowded and very calm place. It’s one of the best place if you are someone who loves hiking, waterfalls and beautiful beaches.

I just got the chance to explore South Goa for Friday came back to North Goa again the same day.

Goa is that place that has the best experiences of every kind. You can’t stop yourself falling in love with GOA!!

The experience from work’s point of view

I want to talk more about the work + vacation part in this post, if you are looking to read about what are the things you can do in Goa then there are so many amazing posts and videos already on the internet.

Work-ation sounds fun and relieving, trust me it really is:

1. Workation helps you with the socialising that you missed for so many days working from your room every single day.
2. One gets to meet a lot of amazing people coming from variety of domain, places and age groups.
3. You get to witness the entire atmosphere getting converted from work mode at day time and weekdays to party, vacation holiday mode in weekends and night time.
4. Go to group trips with people living with you.
5. Increase your network.
6. Explore a new surrounding and environment which is not that boring room you were stuck in for months.

but….. wait… is’nt there a catch ?

Yeah, unfortunately there are some..

1. Internet, you gotta make sure internet is good. I struggled a lot with internet in Goa. The only place I can recommend in Goa with credible high speed internet is https://nomadgao.com/ , I got to know about this place when I eventually was fed up with Internet at the places I stayed and I needed to attend a conference and give a talk. I can’t compromise the talk because of internet issues.
2. I was working on an ongoing live event at our app. So, as I was part of backend team and monitoring the situation and trying to fix some issues directly that we found in later stages. It put me sometimes in a stressful situation. So, I really recommend doing a workation only if you are part of a sprint in which you know that work won’t be much stressing. Because otherwise it hurts when you say no to others who are going to a trip outside and you say I will join later on because maybe you have some bug or data fixes to do.
3. If you are someone who likes to grow and learn at weekends then definitely workation can put that to hold, you will use your weekends to the fullest to enjoy as you worked the entire week mostly at that place. So either it’s weekend or it’s holidays in between that allow you to fully explore that place and culture. So make sure to put those self learning plans on hold for those weeks. I will recommend to not do a workation especially if you are in between a switch process or preparing for interview that’s in coming months.
4. You have to be cautious of party routines with other travellers, because some of them are just tourists not on workation, so late nighters could disturb your next work day.
5. If you are on a long stay then you will definitely miss the people who became part of your groups with whom you hang out did few trips and they left early.
6. Please really avoid a workation if you don’t have strong immunity, as covid is still out there and it could be next to difficult to rescue you back from that far away place from your home.
7. If you were someone who relied on house help or family for daily stuff like food, laundry then that’s definitely going to take your time. You won’t have the same setup as you used to have at home, you might not have a kitchen or a washing machine. So that challenge needs to be figure out and it can affect your working hours too.

I really hope this pandemic ends and maybe we can have this culture continued and booming in the free world. Community and resources around this culture getting more evolved and adaptive to needs of coming wave of new age remote workers.

Till then wish you all a safe and happy day!