Travel With Care

Itching to explore a new place? Want to escape the daily grind? Wish life was one big vacation? Indeed, the world is your oyster and travel you must, with care!

Travelling is the new rich. Exotic destinations, luxurious properties, unique experiences, curated workshops, you name it and there is a segment available. Essentially the tourist is spoilt for choice. And travelling has been democratized by now, everyone is travelling to somewhere everytime you speak to them. This is good as more of us now move, observe, learn and get shaped by these travel choices. If there is one thing missing, it’s a uniform social etiquette for travellers.

Eating local and seasonal is the best way to keep your digestive system in harmony. Not only do you savour a new cuisine, but also carry the sights, flavours and smells of the place long after your visit. Similarly sampling local handmade industries provide a glimpse of the cultural diversity and richness of the place. Interacting with native guides, hiring local drivers and other help staff gives an opportunity to mingle with the folks, listen to stories of the indigenous tribes and learn the ropes of the land. All this only makes your travel memories richer, humane and insightful – apart from the curated experiences and visits which are part of any standard itinerary.

Just like responsible tourism, need of the hour is to systemize travel processes to balance demand supply sides. Uttarakhand, India is know for pilgrimage and adventure sports. Steps are being taken to implement tokenised entry exit of tourists so as to not burden the existing infrastructure and preserve overall tourist experience. Similarly a portable water crisis is emerging in tropical islands of Andaman & Nicobar, India where an overwhelming demand has started straining the natural resources. Pricing techniques could be applied here so as to extract profitable revenues from those who can afford to pay for premiumness. This way both profitability and accessibility can be matched. Similar mechanisms can be put too use in popular tourist places like Goa, Pondicherry where seasonality doesn’t play much role so travel demand can be evenly spread out by using pricing as an accessibility factor.

So travel we must continue to do. Aiming to keep our ecological footprint smaller both as individuals as well as a society!