Is Good AQI The New Travel Selling Point?

There’s a moment every year — somewhere between the first stubble-burning plume drifting into Delhi and the government announcing new restrictions with the enthusiasm they exhibit every single year like clockwork— when you realise something strange: you’ve stopped checking the weather app and started checking the AQI. It’s no longer “Is it cold yet?” It’s “Is it breathable today?”

This year, that moment arrived early. October had the consistency of a burnt toast cloud, November settled into a medical warning, and by the time the AQI crossed into the 400s, everyone I knew had built an internal fantasy that looked something like this: not a spa, not a beach, not even a vacation — just oxygen. Just the ability to inhale without feeling like you’re dying.

It’s perverse, really. Delhi is the only city where your lungs age faster than your parents and your air purifier has become a standard. So of course, in this dystopian circus, the newest, hottest travel flex is not “I found this great boutique property in the hills,” but “The AQI was in double digits.”

Double digits! Imagine being that person. Imagine living in a city where breathing clean air is a brag.

And so a new travel season has emerged — not winter holidays, not summer retreats — I call it the Respiratory Escape, that urgent getaway people now book with the same panic as a hospital appointment. We’re not looking for serenity or self-discovery; we’re looking for lungs that don’t feel like they’ve been sandpapered.

Take Dehradun, for instance. I got an email from a hotel — a genuinely lovely property perched under the Shivaliks — telling me that what they offer is “fresh mountain air, far from the city’s pollution.” They were polite. They were sincere. They were right. And I, sitting in Delhi, feeling like my living room had attained the atmospheric texture of a tandoor, could only think: How did clean air become a marketing angle? How is this real life?

But here we are. Ananda in the Himalayas, once the poster child of wellness pilgrimages, feels like a UN-designated safe zone. The Kumaon properties — Shakti Prana, Mary Budden Estate, even those quiet boutique stays in Mukteshwar — are atmospheric rehabilitation centres for urban degenerates like us.

Rajasthan, hilariously, is also making the cut — not because the desert is inherently clean (it’s dusty, always has been, always will be), but because at this point Delhi residents look at a PM10 reading of 120 and think, that’s practically Alpine.

But let me be clear: this isn’t about hotels. They’re not the villains. They’re just adapting to a world where cities are choking and travellers are re-prioritising their hierarchy of needs. They didn’t create the crisis; they’re just the ones handing out the metaphorical oxygen masks while the plane is mid-descent.

And here’s the part that stings: clean air shouldn’t be aspirational. It shouldn’t be a privilege. It shouldn’t require four hours of driving and a tank full of petrol. Yet in 2025, in Delhi, clean air has become a luxury commodity. A status symbol. A kind of bio-wellness token you buy through travel.

We can call it wellness. We can call it travel. But let’s tell the truth: it’s survival, dressed up as leisure. And until something fundamentally shifts — policy, infrastructure, agricultural practice, meteorology, divine intervention — the Himalayan foothills will remain our emergency exit route.

So yes, book your trip to Kumaon or Dehradun or anywhere above 5,000 feet. Take your weekend of breathable mornings. Reset your alveoli. But don’t pretend this is normal, or fine, or just another trend. It’s not.

And when you find yourself exhaling clean air in a quiet mountain room, don’t forget to ask the uncomfortable question: Why is this something I have to leave home to experience?