What is slow travel and how can you embrace it?
Wondering what on earth slow travel is and how you can make it a part of how you move around the world?
Sometimes with travel, it can feel a bit last chance to see.
There’s a need to tick off destinations on travel bucket lists, count countries and confidently mark a place as being ‘done’, after being there for perhaps a mere 48 hours.
When you travel fast however, you can miss things. Such as what really makes a place special.
And while it can feel tempting to maximise your time off, especially if it’s only a couple of weeks a year, travelling fast can leave you feeling burned out and exhausted. A holiday is supposed to refresh you, not burn you to the ground.
Slow travel allows you to foster a deep connection with a place, and/or its local community and environment. Yet something that doesn’t always get talked about in articles about slow travel, is that it also allows you to foster a connection with yourself.
It gives you time to breathe, and be. To amble along a path, rather than racing through it.
Slow travel is a very important part of travelling responsibly.
Let’s take a good look at how we can embrace it in our own travels.
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Ways to support slow travel
Here are a few ways you can be more intentional while you travel.
1. Explore your own backyard
The easiest way to embrace slow travel is to get to know a place extraordinarily well. And why not start with the town, state/county or country you live in?
While I’ve been lucky enough to travel to many interesting places around the world, I’ve largely prioritised travel in my own ‘backyard’. And it’s a big one, consisting of the entire country of Australia.
Australia isn’t exactly a budget destination these days, but I’ve stretched my own as far as it can go, and have travelled to a lot of interesting and beautiful places as a consequence. Many of which I then write about on this blog!
Getting to know where you live gives you a deeper appreciation for it, and cultivates a sense of connection. And if you do it slowly, you’ll do it well.
2. Travel deeper
Travel bucket lists and caps on annual leave come with a lot of pressure too see and do as much as possible, when you get the chance to go for a wander.
However, all the doing can sometimes take away from the experience itself.
Only have a couple of weeks in the year to travel? Rather than spending that time jumping from place to place, can you go to one country, one destination and really soak up the sights?
Is there are place you’ve travelled to that you really love? Why not go back and scratch further beneath the surface?
You don’t have to see and do it all, particularly if you’re just trying to keep up with the Joneses (a feeling that social media, especially Instagram specialises in promoting).
Carve your own path and wander down it.
3. Give yourself breaks
Likewise, don’t pack a travel schedule full of activities, if you can help it. Give yourself breaks in-between the sights, where you can have time to breathe and to be.
Some of my favourite memories of travel are the days when I had nothing planned.
I’d drive to wherever looked interesting, stroll around a city, or even would stay in my accommodation to read a good book.
Funny how those are the days that live on in my memory.
If you’re travelling for a holiday, take it slow and give yourself a proper break. You don’t want to return to life as you know it even more exhausted and depleted.
4. Stay in eco-friendly accommodation
Okay, back to more practical pieces of advice.
In order to practice slow travel, it’s help to be considered about all facets of travel – including where you sleep for the night.
If possible, try to book into accommodation with green credentials.
Some places are very obviously sustainable, such as ecolodges, glampsites and wildlife retreats.
Staying in a hotel? Consider the following:
- Do they provide toiletries in large, refillable containers?
- Are guests strongly encouraged to reuse towels?
- Do they have a recycling program?
- Is the hotel making efforts to minimise waste, and reduce energy and water consumption?
- Is it built with eco-friendly materials? Does it incorporate the use of solar panels and rainwater harvesting?
For more, check out these eco-friendly accommodation options in Victoria.
5. Leave no trace
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Heard of the saying take only memories, leave only footprints?
This mantra encourages all travellers to leave a place exactly as you found it.
Slow travellers do not mind going an extra step, taking time to clean up any mess they have made and then disposing of it responsibly.
Besides picking up litter, you can ‘leave no trace’ you were in a place by staying on marked paths, leaving native plants intact and not removing shells from beaches.
For more, see my extensive guide to zero waste travel.
6. Try local experiences
Plan your travels around activities, tours and experiences that are locally-owned and run.
This way, you’re not gifting your hard-earned tourist dollars to giant conglomerates – you’re feeding them back into the community, to the people whose livelihoods may depend on tourism.
Not sure where to start? You could seek out experiences that are backed by eco-certification. Here in Australia, businesses that are committed to responsible practices can seek certification with Ecotourism Australia and so, that’s a great place to begin your planning.
Experiences could include guided hikes, nature tours, stand-up paddleboarding or First Nations-led cultural tours.
Explore responsible travel tips.
7. Connect with nature
A strong connection with nature is important to cultivate, if you wish to travel slow.
And this can go beyond simply taking a walk in nature, or camping.
There are two practices I consider to be the gateway to nature connection.
One is known as ‘sit spotting‘. It’s where you carve out ten or fifteen minutes at least to sit in nature, daily.
Ideally, it would be the same spot, but travelling can obviously throw a spanner in the works, on that. So, maybe you find a spot that can serve you for however long you’re in a place.
It doesn’t have to be in “the wild” either. I’ve had a sit spot in a local park, under a tree, with a lot of foot traffic going past.
Here, you simply sit and observe what’s going on around you.
Another way to tune in to nature, is to take notice of the birds around you. Can you identify them by sight? And once you get good at that… can you next identify them by call? That certainly makes things more challenging!
8. Seek out conservation opportunities
If your eyes and ears are open, you may find conservation opportunities while you’re travelling.
These could consist of:
- Tree-planting
- Clean-ups
- Coastal habit protection
- Wildlife monitoring
- Re-forestation
If you’re interested in volunteering while you travel in Australia, see what’s listed on Conversation Volunteers. They have events and opportunities all around the country.
It could also be worth looking online for a local ‘friends’ group for the area you’re visiting. They may hold weekly events where they pick up litter or maintain native vegetation.
And if you can’t find any organised opportunities, make up your own. It can be as simple as picking up rubbish on a walk, leaving a place a little cleaner than when you arrived.
9. Learn about First Nations cultures and communities
This is an important factor for countries like Australia, which have a long and rich Indigenous culture, which is absolutely worth exploring and experiencing.
Alongside being generally respectful of these lands, slow travellers seek out experiences that enrich their knowledge of the First Nations who lived and managed these areas, sometimes for tens of thousands of years.
Here in Australia you can book tours and experiences with First Nations-owned or operated business, or attend a Welcome to Country, initiated by Traditional Owners of the lands you’re on.
Learning the traditional place names of the lands you’re visiting is also a good first step.
10. Avoid places that suffer from overtourism
What is overtourism? Put simply, it’s when too many visitors to a place start to put a strain on it.
When locals, wildlife, the environment and infrastructure are suffering from the impact of too many bodies, you know there’s a problem.
As a responsible traveller wanting to embrace slow travel, you can choose to avoid these places, opting instead for destinations a little bit off the beaten track instead.
If there’s some place you want to go that it’s incredibly popular, could you travel there in the shoulder season, when there are less crowds and more need for the tourism dollar?
For more, find out how to avoid looking like a tourist in Europe, for example.
11. Disconnect, in order to reconnect
Here’s an idea.
Take your phone. Switch it off. And bury it deep in your luggage or backpack.
Then, take a deep breath. Ground yourself. Humanity has only been going about with little computers in their pockets since 2007. You’ve got this.
In all seriousness, there’s no better way to distract yourself from the beauty of your travels, than by spending most of it staring into your phone.
I’m personally trying to embrace a dumphone lifestyle in my day to day existence. It’s a wonderful challenge! I’m hoping to build up to travelling without a smartphone entirely, but for now I just try to keep it switched off and out of sight.
12. Take the longer route
The phrase it’s the journey, not the destination may feel like it’s a bit overused. However, there is a lesson here, when applied to responsible modes of travel.
While flying is generally the most efficient way of getting from point A to B, it’s far from being the most pleasant.
Airports are generally not fun places to spend any length of time in – particularly when you choose to sleep in them.
Yet catching a long train or an overnight ferry from one destination to another, is fun. It’s memorable. Sometimes it’s even the highlight of your trip.
Plus, flying is much worse for the environment than other types of transport. What you save in time, you pay for in emissions. Or rather, we all do.
How can you travel slow?
Hopefully now you have a solid understanding of what slow travel actually is and how you can embed it into the way you travel.
If you have any further ideas for embracing slow travel, I’d love to read them in the comments.
After more thoughtful posts like this?
You may be interested in the following:
- What are the permaculture principles: and how can you apply them to your travels?
- How to cope with eco-anxiety
- Very helpful eco-friendly travel products
- Should people be shamed for flying?
