Journal · Seasonal
January from India: five windows that work
January is a strange month for travel from India. The festive season has ended, the office has reopened, and the travel calendar has a gap — a breathing space between the year-end rush and the early-summer planning season. For the families and couples who use January as the reset month, and for those whose Christmas plans didn’t include international travel, it is one of the better planning opportunities of the year.
Window one: the Maldives
January is peak Maldives. The southwest monsoon is gone, the sky is clear, the water is its specific blue, and the house reefs are calm. The rates are at their second-highest of the year (Christmas week is higher; January is merely expensive). The booking window has passed for the best rooms at the most sought-after properties — those filled in September or October — but good inventory exists at the excellent-but-not-famous properties, which are often the right choice.
Window two: Thailand
January is Thailand’s best month. Both the Andaman and Gulf coasts are in their dry season. The crowds from the European and Australian summer holidays have returned. Bangkok is operating at full capacity — the restaurants, the rooftops, the river — and the beach resorts are running at comfortable occupancy levels rather than the full houses of December. The rates are good: 20 to 30 percent below December peak at most properties.
Window three: Kenya
January is the quiet-excellent safari window. The long rains are six months away. The short rains ended in November. The grass in the Mara is high from the rains, which makes driving through it atmospheric and makes large predators — particularly lions, who are excellent at disappearing into long grass — harder to spot. The upside: the camps are at low occupancy, the guides have more time with each vehicle, and the migration, while not present, is less missed when the landscape and the available wildlife are doing their own thing.
“The camps in January are at low occupancy. The guides have more time with each vehicle.”
Window four: Switzerland (ski season)
January is mid-season in the Swiss Alps: the Christmas crowds have returned to their offices and the February school holiday rush hasn’t arrived. The snow is reliable. The slopes are occupied but manageable. Zermatt in the second week of January is one of the best versions of Zermatt available — the resort at full operation without the occasion surcharge.
Window five: the Eastern coast of South Africa
A less obvious recommendation that earns its inclusion: January is summer in the southern hemisphere, and the KwaZulu-Natal coast — Durban and north toward the St. Lucia Wetlands and iSimangaliso — is warm, the whales are present, and the safari options in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (the oldest proclaimed nature reserve in Africa, with the highest surviving wild rhinoceros population) are extraordinary. Direct or one-stop connections from India via Dubai exist; the routing is slightly unusual, and the destination rewards the effort.
January is the reset, and it suits a wider map than most people use it for. Pick the window that fits the year you want to begin, and let the month do its quiet work.