This Valentine’s Day, meet couples who met on vacation

Movies, books, and songs over the years have led us to believe in the idea of a holiday romance. New city, new possibilities… and sometimes new love. This could be a holiday fling that ends when the couple says goodbye to each other, or a relationship that thrives for weeks, months, years… despite the daily humdrum and challenges of work, family, and life. While some of us come back with suitcases full of souvenirs, there are a few who come back with a significant other.

Renuka Patra (35) and Arnav Patra (35)

For Renuka Patra, a realist, holiday romance is something she never believed would happen to her. She went to Europe to spend time with her sister and friends. On a cold, drizzly day in Budapest in 2017, while soaking in the warm pools of Szechenyi bath, two friendly Indians — Arnav and his friend — struck up a conversation with them. “I was doing a solo trip across Europe for a month and hadn’t met any Indian on that trip. And my friend who was working in Budapest for six months hadn’t seen too many Indians either so we were happy to see people from our country. We soon realised that we were all from Mumbai,” says Arnav Patra, a pilot currently based out of Bengaluru.

Renuka and her girl gang were in Budapest for just one night and were leaving for Vienna the next morning. After chatting for about half an hour and giving them restaurant recommendations, Arnav and his friend went ahead with their day. None of them exchanged numbers. But fate intervened, and three hours later, Arnav and Renuka bumped into each other at a restaurant. They were waiting for tables and decided to sit together. “Dinner was fun. Arnav drank strawberry beer and I judged him,” laughs Renuka, a business manager.

After dinner Arnav convinced the rest to come with him to the Hungarian parliament, post which they ended up at the ruin pubs. “Arnav and I were walking ahead. And my sister noticed that there was definitely an interest,” says Renuka.

The next morning the two kept texting each other. “I asked him if he would like to come to Vienna and gave him our hostel details. Seven minutes later he booked the same hostel and sent me a screen shot of the booking. He reached later that evening,” says Renuka. Since Vienna is a relatively quiet city, after the pubs shut, Arnav, Renuka and her sister decided to hang out in the common area of the hostel and play board games. “I thought he would judge me for playing a game here but I felt we should be doing something. We played Sequence. We taught him the game, he put his mind into it and he caught up really fast. He was a sport. That was a green flag for me,” says Renuka, adding that the next morning she left for Italy and Arnav went to Croatia.

After returning to Mumbai they met up again in May and chatted everyday. Arnav laughs, “I wasn’t expecting anything,” he says, but admits that he would call her from far-flung places like Canada on his layovers. Almost organically, they started dating, and in February 2023 they got married. “I was not supposed to go on that trip in 2017 but I went. And Arnav hadn’t planned to go on a holiday but one night he decided to pack his bags and go on that particular solo trip. Those two were my best nights in Europe,” says Renuka.

Lilian Albrecht (30) and Shrey Tandan (38)

In 2016, when Lilian Albrecht came to India from Germany, to spend time with her school friend, little did she know that this would eventually become home. “My friend was finishing a year of voluntary work here. We met in Goa, rode around town on a two wheeler, and then took a sleeper train to Bengaluru to meet other friends. We had planned to go to Mysuru but one of them fell ill. So we decided to go to a city with good hospitals and landed in Chennai, unplanned,” says Lilian aka Lily, an assistant events manager.

In Chennai, her friend suggested they stay at a common friend’s house. That is how they landed up at musician Shrey Tandan’s, house. “I came home to my future husband,” laughs Lilian, adding that the first thing Shrey said to me was, “My mother’s name is also Lily.”

Since Lilian had had a bad food experience outside, Shrey being a good cook, cooked her meals the next day. He made pancakes for breakfast, followed by dal chawal for lunch and paneer sabzi for dinner. “That was the first Indian food that I really enjoyed,” she says, much to Shrey’s delight.

Lilian and her friends were in Chennai for two days and Shrey showed them around the city, took them to Mamallapuram, and then just the two of them went out for pizzas. Shrey asked her to stay back but shortly after that Lilian had to go back to Germany. However, she came back to Chennai after a month. “I came back to see if what Shrey and I had was really magical or just a holiday thing. Instantly we realised this is it!” she adds.

After that Lilian came to India 11 times, sometimes staying for up to three months. It was Shrey’s turn to go to Germany and meet Lilian but “despite a valid visa I was not allowed to board the flight,” says Shrey, adding that his visa got rejected thrice. But he did not give up and kept trying. In 2019 they got engaged and decided to get married but then life threw them another curveball — the pandemic. “We could not meet for 14 months because of the travel ban,” says Shrey. When restrictions started lifting, they met in the Maldives, and travelled to Southeast Asia as well.

“Long distance relationships are not easy but we are proof that if there is real motivation and support from friends and families it is doable,” says Shrey, adding, “We changed our circadian rhythm. When she was in Germany, I used to wait for her to come back from work and then watch shows like Gilmore Girls together (virtually) and then I used to sleep by 5-5.30 am.”

In 2021, Shrey and Lilian got married. “I wrote to the Indian Embassy in Berlin and requested them to give her a special visa to travel to India. Initially, they ignored the email. But I sent repeated emails and they finally responded. They put her on a repatriation flight on which only Indians were allowed,” says Shrey.

“We solemnised our mariage in a District Court in Kanpur, which is where my parents live. Lilian and I then moved to Goa where we now live with our five cats,” he says. Last year, Shrey finally got to visit Germany with Lilian. “When the passport control official stamped my passport in Frankfurt, I teared up. I met Lilian’s friends, visited places she grew up in… It was so important for me to know all this,” he says. Shrey is now learning German and Lilian is learning Hindi, while getting used to Indian flavours with Shrey still whipping up meals for her.

Su Jo Ching (Bebo) (33) and Gajan Gnanaprakasam (36)

When Su Jo Ching, aka Bebo, a Taiwanese national, visited India for the fifth time in a year, the officials at the Chennai airport were curious. “They asked me why I was visiting so many times. I said I was here to meet my boyfriend. When I told them my boyfriend is Indian, they looked shocked,” laughs Bebo.

Once the investigation was done, and Bebo got her passport stamped, one of the officials asked her ‘how did you find a life partner here so easily?’ “I said you can also go down to Pondicherry and find yourself a better half,” says Bebo.

She explains how she came to Chennai in May 2023 for three weeks to meet a friend who was working in Chennai. In the third week, they planned to travel elsewhere. They decided to spend two nights in Auroville and two nights in Puducherry. “The last two nights in Pondy were my last in India and I was flying out to Malaysia after that. I was really craving Chinese soup and found a restaurant near our hotel. The food was great and the soup was just like they make it back home in Taiwan. The owner of the restaurant, Gajan Gnanaprakasam, came to ask me if I enjoyed the meal and we got talking,” she says adding that she had no clue a year down the line she would be married to him.

Gajan asked them if they would like to visit a rooftop bar owned by him. They agreed but throughout the seven-minute drive, Bebo kept her eyes peeled on the road to make sure they were on track. “He turned out to be a good guy,” she laughs. The next day Gajan took Bebo and her friend out again and they stayed up and spoke till 7am when it was finally time for Bebo to leave for the airport.

Gajan, who admits he is a shy guy, says he started talking to Bebo because he wanted to understand Taiwanese culture and cuisine. “But then we started speaking a lot even after she left. I would call her on my way to work, after work, when I was taking a break,” says Gajan. And then, a month and a half later, Bebo made a surprise visit to Pondy. On reaching Gajan’s restaurant, Flaming Dragons, she sent a note through a waiter. It read: This is the most romantic thing I have done in my life, surprising the guy I like. “And in a few seconds, she was in front of me,” says Gajan. He decided he wanted to take Bebo home and introduce her to his family.

By mid-October Bebo moved to India, she was a PhD student then. In February last year, Gajan flew to Taiwan to meet Bebo’s family, and by March 2024 they were married. She wore a sari for the first time, and went around the fire, like she had seen in Indian movies. “I never expected this, but when I met Gajan on my trip, my life began to feel like a novel,” signs off Bebo, who now works with Gajan in Pondy.

Anamika Bharucha (29) and Harish R (33)

For Anamika Bharucha and Harish R, in a way, it was the quest for biryani that brought them together. The two met at Zostel in Munnar in August 2022. “I was travelling alone and all the other solo travellers I had made friends with had left. So I was just texting a friend that I was the only one there. She said a friend of hers named Harish from Chennai would be visiting the next day and I could catch up with him,” says Anamika over a call from Vadodara.

The next day Anamika and Harish met at the common room and got talking. The following morning they planned to drive around, joined by their friends. “I was craving seeraga samba biryani and thought I could make them all try it. So we drove to Udumalaipettai, a town in Tamil Nadu,” says Harish.

It was a four-hour drive, and with Anamika riding shotgun. The two got to speak a lot while their friends dozed off in the backseat. “We did not get to talk a lot the next few days as I was working remotely and was busy. Soon we left and I went back to Bengaluru and he, to Chennai,” says Anamika.

Five days after that, Harish called Anamika to rant about a really bad Bumble date. The conversation went on for an hour and a half and it eventually led to more messaging everyday. In September they planned a trip to Kodaikanal for Harish’s birthday. “A few days before that I told her that I like her,” says Harish and with a grin adds, “She had been dropping hints that she likes me too but I am not good with these things. When I told my friends about our conversation, they said I should have picked up on these hints earlier.”

The travels continued. Harish proposed to her in Singapore and by December 2023 they were married. “For our honeymoon we did a bucket list road trip from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, driving around for a month,” she says. Since Harish has a remote job and Anamika runs a travel company called Nxtrip, they get to explore the world as and when they please. They currently do not have a base. We were in Bengaluru then we were in Himachal for a few months, we are in Vadodara for now… she says adding that they are both slow travellers and like staying longer in a place. And so their car is their most prized possession. This is the same car they drove around in Munnar when they first met and in a way this is home for them.