Where to take your girl in 2014

This article appears in the GQ India April 2014 issue. Reproduced by special arrangement

We’ve seen your girlfriend. Congrats, pal. You’re hitting way above your weight there. Problem is, she’s already told you that if you suggest Goa for your 2014 holiday destination, she’s gone. Never fear, though. We at GQ are always looking out for you, and have provided a destination list that should keep her around for another year – barring you do anything too stupid.

MONGOLIA

So she told you she wants off the tourist trail? Like, really off? Mongolia should do. Tell her the country’s tourism board website doesn’t even work. The capital city, Ulan Bator, houses about half the population, and the other half live pastoral lifestyles spread out over a landlocked million-and-a-half kilometres of desert and steppe. With only 0.4 per cent of arable land, Mongolia’s gur-dwelling nomads move with their livestock according to the seasons, which means their windblown existence can also be yours, solitude seeker; and gone are the days where a good old camp in the land of Genghis Khan meant mutton fat and butter tea for breakfast. These days, even Mongolia is game for a glamp, with eco-friendly gurs with electricity and proper toilets – because isolation shouldn’t have to be inconvenient, and you’re not sure yet if you’d be comfortable having to watch her shit in an open field, no matter how beautiful the sunset behind her.

NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand is a land of freakish beauty, where a volcano or a cave lit with glowworms might be a short drive from a Caribbean-style beach. Recommending a place to take her here is like recommending a place to find rice in China – you kind of can’t miss. But one night at the Huka Lodge in Taupo, nestled along a river and the rest of New Zealand will seem… ordinary. The outdoorsy socialite’s retreat of choice (for those who know of it) has tennis, petanque and croquet courts, swimming and spa pools, and numerous pockets of seclusion from where to admire 220,000 litres of crystalline water blasting by every second. You’ll be glad you’re here, sipping wine, rather than flinging yourself off a bridge attached to a bungee rope. Get the in-house Porsche to drive you to the Wairakei resort’s mind numbingly cool golf course where you’ll know what it’s like to swing a ball in The Shire. Next, go to Lake Taupo (it’s the size of a small city so don’t be disoriented if you think you’ve stumbled upon the sea) where a private cruise (or a raft if she’s feeling plucky) will lead you to trout, bluff oysters and green-lipped mussels. Pretend to be completely blasé as she gasps when you reach the hot spring in the cool water, which causes a giant sizzling steam cloud.

The next morning, head out for a hike by the Waihaha River. But why begin walking before you absolutely have to? A helicopter will pick you up from your lodge and drop you to the spot where your hike commences. Make sure to take her through the nearby camping park on your way back so that she acknowledges you haven’t put her up in a campervan to eat Weet-Bix for breakfast in the name of adventure.
 
IRELAND

Because you know this town has produced the greatest ever writers in English and you want to show her you’re a smarty-pants.

She may be more likely to identify with Bono than Roddy Doyle, but you, my friend, are bringing her to the Oirish capital to show off some street cred via literary pilgrimage, following through the city 12 sidewalk plaques that trace the day lived by Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s masterwork, Ulysses. You do not tell her you find Ulysses, let alone Finnegans Wake, unreadable. As you dawdle down O’Connell Street, more than showing her how Joycean you can be, you’ll throw out pithy aphorisms attributed to Oscar Wilde, but neither of you will mind, because you’re in Dublin, it’s all good craic and you’ll be ratarsed drunk.

This is where, if she hasn’t slapped you for shouting Pogues lyrics at strangers yet, you’ll take her to the gargle’s ground zero, the Guinness Brewery at St James Gate – first jug of Or Dubh produced in 1759.

You’d take her to Trinity College to behold in awe the sacred Book Of Kells, a volume of gospels illuminated by Celtic monks around 800 AD, but you’ve heard that the sacred O’Donoghue’s Pub – where The Dubliners once cut their chops – is right near your hotel at St. Stephen’s Green and pours a good pint of plain. What would Shane McGowan do?

Eventually, she’s going to hide her head in shame when you lunge at the jukebox, demanding “Streams Of Whiskey” be played for the eleventeenth time by bashing your fists into the machine since you can’t see the numbers straight anymore, you feckin’ eedjit.

And at day’s end, as you rely on the railings of Ha’penny Bridge to stumble across the Liffey, she’s going to rue asking you about your literary side before booking a holiday, and break up with you. Maybe you should have just gone to Paris.

Read it in the April 2014 issue of GQ, out on stands now