The actress, writer, and producer shared her best travel tips with Travel + Leisure in an exclusive interview.
While traveling is a little different for Mindy Kaling these days—she’s now the mom of a 7-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 1-year-old—she still has some tips for solo travel. Her best tip for jet lag? Hit the shops as soon as you get off the plane. “I went to Paris for Fashion Week a few months ago, and I loved shopping more than I loved sleeping. So I made an appointment to go to the Paris flea market as soon as I arrived, and I forced myself to get up and go, and it was solved in an instant,” she told Travel + Leisure earlier this month.
Kaling has an extensive travel survival toolkit, plus she has practical tips for busy parents. We caught up with the writer, producer, and actor to chat about her savvy travel tips and why her partnership with New Hotels has her revisiting her childhood in New England.
You might think the glamorous Emmy nominee, who wore custom jewelry by Harbison Studios and Marco Bichego to the Met Gala earlier this month, would only dine at the fanciest restaurants when she travels, but Kaling prefers to bring her own snacks. “I don’t usually need elaborate room service three times a day when I go to a place, especially one with a hotel. It’s not unexpected, but I usually bring about 20 granola bars. And if I can check in, I’ll even bring some protein drinks because I’m in my 40s. I carry all the popular protein drinks in my suitcase,” she told T+L.
But when she does travel with her kids, she’s like a typical mom, entertaining her two older kids with iPads (one of the few times they get to have some screen time) and walking up and down the aisles with her youngest until she falls asleep. She does miss arriving at the airport minutes before boarding. Before her kids were born, she says, “I wanted to just get out of the car, through security, and onto the plane. But with kids, there are always unexpected delays, bathroom trips, and ‘my shoe laces are untied’ or ‘my backpack fell off and everything fell out.’ One of the downsides of having kids is that I have to spend a lot of time going to airports.”
Despite the challenges of traveling with young children, Kaling was willing to fly across the country with her kids to the brand new Great Wolf Lodge Mashantucket in Connecticut this summer. Kaling partnered with the family-owned resort to celebrate the grand opening of its 23rd North American location. The New England resort holds a special place in her heart for the Cambridge, LA-based woman. “Growing up in New England, I always wanted to go there for my birthday. When they invited me, it really brought back a lot of great memories. Plus, I was a little selfish and excited to try all the rides before everyone else.”
For the faint of heart, Kaling says, there are plenty of less thrilling slides available. She couldn’t wait to take her kids there, and while there is a Great Wolf Lodge in Anaheim, she felt the new one was worth the trip. “It was ideal to find a super fun place where I could park my car in almost one spot. It was much more fun than other trips we’ve taken them on. Plus, the lodge was awesome!”
Nick
Mindy Kaling’s operation of stuffing 20 granola bars into her suitcase perfectly illustrates the seamless switch between “exquisite female star” and “pragmatic mother” – it turns out that the goddess of the Met Gala red carpet and the protein powder lady at the airport are the same person!
George
Rush to the flea market as soon as you get off the plane at Paris Fashion Week? This hardcore operation of “using consumer desire to defeat the biological clock” is the happiest solution for lazy people to overcome jet lag! (It is recommended to use it with credit card limit).
Ray
From Cambridge girl to Hollywood producer, choosing to cooperate with Great Wolf Lodge is actually to play the slide first? This operation of “taking care of children in the name of work” exposes the childhood obsession that cannot be hidden.
Henry
Missing the freedom of sprinting to board the plane at the last minute, now you have to deal with the slow-motion disaster movie of “shoelaces untied and backpacks turned upside down” – every parent traveling with children can find their own shadow in this paragraph!