A full year of blood, sweat and Thursday night beers went into the work project I couldn’t wait to finish. At the exact moment it launched, you could find me on a fishing boat in Komodo National Park, Indonesia , eyes to the sky, watching hundreds of bats stream out of the tangled mangrove forests of Kelor Island and into the peach-red sky above. Big moments, it transpires, take many different forms. This two-month holiday – not quite a standard trip, not quite a sabbatical – was part of my ongoing plan to embrace “micro-retirement”: the life strategy of forsaking time and money from retirement to enjoy yourself a little more today. I’m not alone. A report last year from HSBC, “The Rise of Multi Retirements” , showed around half of its respondents were planning a micro-retirement. Of these, half planned to take two to three extended breaks across their lifetime, a figure that increased among younger generations . It makes sense when you consider how retirement is changing for Britons – the number of people working after retirement is increasing (workers aged 65 or over account for one in 25 of the UK workforce ), while the number of years we can expect to live with good health is decreasing, according to ONS data . if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mpu_mobile_l1" } ); } if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mpu_tablet_l1" } ); } Shilpa at Borobudur, a historic Buddhist temple in Java, Indonesia At 47, Indonesia was my first micro-retirement break, brought on by two conspiring facts: I hadn’t taken more than two weeks off since putting down my pen after my uni exams and picking up a job the next Monday, and working for the same company for the previous eight years bought me some leeway. Meanwhile, my partner teaches in a school with long summer holidays. It felt like a fortuitous moment. I’m lucky that I could defer some bills and use savings that I had sensibly earmarked for old age. But the money was not spent sensibly, instead it paid for flights and nasi goreng (fried rice). Over summer in the UK, the southern hemisphere plunges into winter, and other popular tourist hotspots like India and Vietnam face monsoons and rainy seasons. Only Indonesia offered a mix of clement weather, affordable living (with three-star hotels starting from around £15 per night) and far-flung adventure that we wouldn’t have been able to experience properly within a two-week holiday. We made the most of the opportunity straight away: it took a 16-hour flight, a regional flight, and a four-hour drive through eerily unyielding palm oil plantations to arrive at the sticky-hot climate of Bukit Lawang, a village in the island of Sumatra. The privilege of absorbing a place that would have otherwise been unfeasible to visit due to time constraints was front and centre of the experience – I lapped it up like I was on borrowed time. if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mpu_mobile_l2" } ); } if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mpu_tablet_l2" } ); } The genius of micro-retirement came into focus again when searching for Sumatra’s big draw of wild orangutans . The island is one of only two places in the world in which you can see them (the other is Borneo). Led by Ryan, my guide from my guesthouse, Indra Valley Inn, I was the first out one morning to trek in Gunung Leuser National Park, where over 5,000 orangutans nest in the towering forests. Its canopy, it turned out, was just as adept at trapping humidity – and, that week, Sumatra was in the grip of a heatwave. Dressed in long sleeves, long trousers and long socks, to ward off leeches and mosquitos, the 43°C heat was a physical reckoning like no other. Whenever he got a tip-off about a sighting from another guide, Ryan light-footedly set a pace I couldn’t match. Each steep climb of the forest paths left me immobile at the top, drenched in sweat and heart pounding like a kick drum. “Take your time, it’s not a race, it’s your holiday,” he’d say, only a little itchy to get going. Seeing orangutans casually hanging from trees was a highlight of Shilpa’s trip (Photo: James Goh/Getty) When we arrived at the place of a sighting, I marvelled at the orangutans nonchalantly dangling from the treetops, sun streams hitting their gangly limbs and illuminating their long, orange coats. It was absolutely worth the exertion. But could I have done the hike at 67? I could barely do it at 47. That thought – a recognition that fitness levels can be restrictive, perhaps more so than age – kept me company as we snaked from the wild north of Indonesia through the tourist hotspots of Yogyakarta, Bali and Lombok, to the macabre highlands of Toraja in Sulawesi. Red-eye starts and intense days out in the heat were exciting, but made me grateful that my body could absorb the stress. In Nusa Penida, gliding alongside enormous manta rays in rough ocean swells made me glad I’d pushed myself in the gym. Yet the benefits of the micro-retirement were more than physical. Travel insurance was cheaper than it would have been in my sixites, for a start. There’s no official age limit on going to a beach club, but I’m glad I still felt young enough to experience Savaya, Bali’s open-air club perched on a dramatic clifftop, which fortuitously throws sunset parties that wrap up early enough for me to get my solid eight hours of sleep. Shilpa was glad to make the most of the party at Savaya Club in Bali More than anything, the joy of my and my partner’s micro-retirement was two months of living each day exactly how we wanted it. We booked a last-minute boat trip because we felt like it, checked out early from accommodation that had audible termites in the walls and checked into a boutique four-star instead, and we treated ourselves to mocha frappes at 10pm, because we could. Did I return a changed person? At this life stage, not really. But I experienced the beauty of Indonesia and its people, and got to know the real me a bit better – how much energy I have when I’ve no obligations, how much I relish conversation when I’m never going to see the fleeting friend again. if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mpu_mobile_l3" } ); } if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mpu_tablet_l3" } ); } According to HSBC’s retirement research, six years is the optimal time between micro-retirements, so I’ve already set my sights on the next extended break: South America in 2032. Consider the savings pot open. How to do it Island-hopping group tours across Indonesia are available with Intrepid, G Adventures, Trailfinders, Rickshaw Travel and others. Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines offer flights between London and Bali. Bali is well-serviced by ferries, liveaboards and flights to other parts of Indonesia. Three-star hotels cost around £15–£45 a night in Indonesia.

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