Welcome to My Travel Site!

Hello there, I’m Ashley!

I want to help you make that family vacation happen.

Traveling with your family is fun but planning the trip can be daunting. From finding the most convenient time for the trip, to planning the budget, to booking the travel and stays, the list goes on and on…

Sometimes you get so overwhelmed by planning a trip that you eventually give up, or end up booking a travel agency who may not be accommodative of all your needs.

I hope that Plan Ashley Go helps you plan your trip on your own and gain full control of any changing needs during your trip.

Who am I?

I am a 32-year-old woman who was lucky to be born to travel-enthusiast parents who took me to different parts of India from a very young age. Now, while I still occasionally go on vacations with my parents, most of my trips these days are with my husband and son. Sometimes, it is all of us together. To make it “more the merrier,” sometimes we are joined by my sister and her family to complete the “Brady Bunch!”

I have a Ph.D. in English Literature from Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, so I am qualified to add “Dr.” before my name! I am so darn good at research that I was awarded the ICSSR  Doctoral Fellowship in 2017-18 by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. Currently, I am working at THORS eLearning Solutions, Ohio, USA, as a technical course writer and reside in Kochi, Kerala.

From accommodating the knee pain of elderly family members on a hill station trip to managing a sick and cranky toddler who refuses to leave my arms throughout the trip, I have had my fair share of responsibilities to manage on my various trips. If anything, making the trips happen through these challenges has made me a better travel planner than if I had relied on some travel agents to shoulder the responsibility for me.

What is Plan Ashley Go About?

Whenever I go on a trip, I do extensive research on the places I plan to visit. In my blog, I write about only the places I have been to. The products and services I review and recommend are either based on my personal experience or through information gathered through research. 

My Story

Growing up, I never gave much thought to how my parents planned and executed all the LTC travels my father was entitled to while in the government service. My responsibility then was to just enjoy the trip!

Then, sometime in my late teens, I realized how much I enjoyed planning a vacation. For me, planning made the journey is as exciting as the actual trip. In 2008, my parents saw how enthusiastic I was at travel planning that they asked me to plan the most eccentric trip we ever made as a family. On that trip, each of us four wanted to visit a different place on a 9-day trip to north-west India, which we could cover only by train and that too from Kerala in South India!

To our biggest surprise, we managed to visit Amritsar, Udaipur, Agra, and Jaipur on that trip, spending 5 out of the 9 nights in trains. I know, crazy!

Looking back at that trip now, I feel like while we managed to check off all four places from our bucket list, we never got to experience their culture and heritage.

Then, in my early twenties, I became the internet-empowered explorer who focused more on experiences than checking off places off my bucket list. I was at that time a Ph.D. research scholar at Pondicherry University. I traveled mostly solo or with my friends to different parts of India for my research. Before going on those trips, I used to spend hours researching to squeeze in the must-sees, best places to eat, and cheap places to shop to make the most of my trips. 

During those days, when I could set out wandering through the places to soak in the local vibes, I was at my whims to explore. In 2018, I married my college sweetheart, Irwin, after eight years of courtship and got a new travel buddy. He was then followed by our son, Noah, who arrived in 2019.

Since then, planning travel has become more about striking a balance between the duration, budget, convenience, and all of this around what my little boy could take at a specific time.

Ebook

Check out my comprehensive travel guide to Kochi