Yes, good question, what is slow travel?! Be honest – when you first heard of it, did a part of you assume it was coined by another ‘wellness’ expert, who, only able to afford the cheapest and slowest means of transport during their gap years, decided to then tell the rest of us how to do it? Call us cynical, but the Tortoise’s natural instinct is to eschew mass opinion and the latest trend, especially when the slow travel movement seems to have more clarity regarding what it’s not, rather than what it is. However, we recognize that slow travel is something that we’ve always done, not only with our sister company Venture Vienna, but in the way we’ve lived, worked and traveled for most of our lives.
We think it’s great to think of ways of reducing how much we fly, of trying to connect more, of thinking critically about what where we stay, what tours we take, and where and what we eat & drink. But, rather than jumping on another unnecessarily divisive bandwagon, we see the need for a more attainable form of slower travel.
The opposite of slow travel - Tick-box travel
Flying is cheaper now than it has ever been, and (dare I say it?), the world has opened up due to low-cost airlines. People have opportunities to gain new perspectives and to expose themselves to new cultures more than at any time in human history. In theory, this should be a good thing for our species, but at the same time, the unstoppable rise of the internet now also means that many of us inhabit comfortable, warm, algorithm-driven echo chambers, leading us towards the same ‘must-do’ travel experiences and bucket lists. This type of travel tends to prioritize what I like to call ‘tick-box travel’ i.e jam-packing your itinerary with the same well trodden activities, to the extent that your experience becomes watered down, impersonal and hurried. I can’t imagine that this style of tourism provides much insight to the individual traveler (other than information they could already find on Google), nor benefit to the weary local host who is unable to make genuine connections with his/her guests given the sheer volume of tourists they receive. It’s hard to live like a local when you’re surrounded by 17 other tourists and being herded through the narrow streets of a new city.
What is lost when we fly?
There is also something disturbingly mundane and anonymous about flying short-haul, as if you expect the destination to be similar to your origin because you’ve lost all concept of the distance traveled to get there. Slower means of travel (trains, ferries, bikes, piggyback, horse and cart etc.) give you a natural sense of anticipation, excitement and awe as you gradually see and understand what it means to move over long distances into different latitudes, longitudes, lands and cultures. This all-important sense of anticipation became the first victim to the era of cheap air travel (other than our atmosphere and a few birds, of course). When was the last time that you genuinely enjoyed flying, or was it merely a means to an end? Shouldn’t the journey be fun too?
So, what is slower travel?
Considering the unstoppable expectation and drive that we humans have for making everything as easy as possible, slow travel can be hard to do well, or even at all. Again, we’re not anti-flying, and we recognize that in some cases viable alternatives just don’t exist, or are too damn expensive, so our aim here is just to simplify the concept. We think that the principles of slow travel come down to making practical day-to-day decisions before and during your holiday, revolving around 5 main areas:
- how you get there and how you travel around
- where you stay
- where and what you eat & drink
- what activities you do & how you engage with nature
- what you learn about the place you’re visiting
Each little decision made can make a small contribution to learning about a place, to reducing emissions, to supporting the local economy where possible or simply to enriching your holiday. These are the areas that we like to focus on here at The Travel Tortoise.
What are the benefits of slow travel?
Great travel is all about feeling connected, and this is generated by the landscapes, experiences and people you meet along the way. Put your phone away, look out the window, and focus on this stuff, cos it’s real and right in front of you. Watching different people and cultures may also help you to better understand the world, and your place in it a little more too. Even if you decide to use public transport instead another Uber, then that’s slower travel. At the end of the day, nothing really makes you a slow traveler and nothing prevents you from being one, because it’s not an identity. It’s just a term that someone made up, that a few other people thought was cool, cos it might encourage others to get involved. So be realistic and travel in whatever style that helps you to better understand and connect with a place.