Move over refrigerator magnets, keychains and straw hats — there’s a new kind of travel souvenir in town and, unlike most others that simply gather dust in your storage after a few weeks, this piece of memorabilia can stay with you for your entire lifetime. We’re referring to vacation tattoos, a rising trend among hip, experimental globe-trotters. Take, for instance, newly-weds Ira Khan and Nupur Shikhare who decided to get inked together during their honeymoon in Bali. While the happy couple chose matching turtles, tattoo artists in the city say that the trend is gaining more steam than ever before. “As holidays and tattoos become more accessible to younger generations of travellers, it is but a natural next step to combine the two. While this isn’t a completely new phenomenon — we’ve all heard of those infamous ‘Goa’ tattoos — we’ve had many people travelling to or transiting through Mumbai, who stop by for a quick tattoo to remind them of their blissful holiday,” says Ronit Raut, lead tattoo artist and owner of Black Dot Ink Tattoo Studio in Andheri.

Ujjwal Judge; Ronit Raut and J’son D’souza