Slow travelling is something we touched upon in a recent blog called ‘Fast Travel vs Slow Travel‘ which compared slow travel and fast travel. It’s understanding what they both are and which would be better suited to your travel needs and plans. It’s not a topic many think of when deciding to travel but really provides insight on how to plan your trip and helps you to make the most everyday.
For those who aren’t aware of what slow travel is, it’s pretty simple. Slow travel is the design to travel at a slower pace. Now, this can be for a number of reasons. And this is what we look to delve deeper into later on in this blog. But slow travel isn’t usually the common type of travel for most.
Fast travel seems to be a lot more popular and here’s why. The main benefit of fast travel is so you can see more place compare to slow travel. It’s like visiting a sweet shop and buying one of everything. You know you are buying too much, but you don’t know when you will be in the sweet shop again so you make sure you don’t miss out. When travelling there is so much to see and do, travelers often get FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). It’s common and leads people to visit more places just to cram it all in. This partnered with the fact that many travelers only do this part time or rarely meaning they aren’t likely to be back at this corner of the globe any time soon. So they think ‘while I’m here I might as well make the most of it.
But this is enough about fast travel, after all, it’s not the topic of conversation.
Benefits of Slow Travel
As mentioned above, slow travel comes with a lot of benefits which we will put under the microscope now.
Becoming A Local
The main benefit of slow travel is being able to enjoy the places you visit more. Picture this, you have 2/3 days in each location and you are constantly rushing around to complete to ‘top things to do in each location’. By doing this, you will be missing out on the rest of the activities in the location as well as a host of things to do there. This includes the best coffee shops, places to eat and so much more.
Slow travel really allows you to savour each moment and enjoy the little things. If you are just racing through each place you may not remember much about it other than the ‘big activity’. Some of the fondest memories is the ones where you weren’t necessarily doing the craziest of activities, rather, the most simple. An example of this would be enjoying a late night sing along with locals in Indonesia where a local was playing guitar and we sat with him and his friends for hours singing. It was amazing!
Sometimes you need to just embrace the place you are in, take a moment to be present to enjoy it the most.
Recovery Days
Traveling will be an amazing experience no matter where you go. Whether you enjoy partying, living off grid or just exploring new cultures, you will be sure to have the time of your life. So many memories will be made and you will likely see more than most. However, a lot of people don’t mention one of the downsides to travel.
It. Is. Exhausting.
First of all, living out of a backpack or suitcase is pretty simple for a few weeks but when you are venturing into months or even years, it can be quite a challenge. Not to mention the endless activities you have planned each day to make the most of each trip. The last thing you want to do is have an ‘off day’ and miss out on some awesome experience!
So don’t!
It’s super important, if not a necessity to allow for down days. Days where you can relax and allow your body to recover. You have to think, a lot of your travel time will be lugging round a heavy bag and moving from place to place so 1-3 days every so often is so needed.
For traveling, we would recommend roughly a 2 day break every 3-4 weeks depending on how fast you travel and how much of a veteran you are at traveling. After a busy few weeks jumping from place to place and completing daring, once-in-a-lifetime activities, there’s no better way to spend some time.
For this, we would recommend you to find a place near the beach (if possible), a pool would work well also. And spend time to yourself, reading a book, or relaxing in the sun and taking the days easy. For adrenaline seekers, this may seem boring. However, your body cannot keep going at a fast pace forever when travelling so make sure to take this breaks to avoid travel burn out.
We would suggest to maybe revisit some old fond memories you enjoyed before travelling such as tennis or hiking but do it without feeling the need to be somewhere. Have a wander up the beach or through some shops and really let your body recover. It’s important to note that your mind would need a rest also. Having a few days without a packed schedule might help with this.
Avoid Missing Out
Travelling really is an open ended book. You have the possibility to experience whatever you want in each location and it’s your job, as the author, to make these decisions. A slow travel plan will allow you to learn about travelling on the way and maybe even be informed by fellow travellers of new, unheard of experiences that you are interested in. Research can only give you so much.
The idea of slow travel is learning more about each place and embracing the little things so when you go you will have added time in each location. This will give you a buffer so that if there are any other activities in a location you might not of planned for, then you have the time to schedule it in.
If you are running off a fast paced travel schedule, you will either have to miss out of the activity or substitute it with another which either way, you will be missing out.
Flexibility
Even if you have done hours and hours of research into where you are heading, and planned it perfectly, it doesn’t mean your schedule will work perfectly. You have to understand you are heading into new places which running totally different to what you are used to. They may have poorer transport, or different open and closing times which you can’t always plan for.
Slow travel lets you substitute your time and move about days to suit any issues that may arise. An example would be in Philippines which have poor transportation links which require a few days buffer. If not, you will have to lose out on parts of your plan. If we had planned slow travel, then we could of worked around it with the added days as safety. This is a mistake we aim to not make again as we missed out on one of our top activities because of this and we don’t want you to do the same.
Overview
Slow travelling is, at least for us, the desired way of travelling. It really allows you to make the most of your time and be flexible when deciding on your plans. There’s so many things that can delay your travels that are out of your hands, it’s best to have a little buffer. Therefore, you can still see everything you want plus more without missing out on your bucket list activities. Obviously, this is location specific but we would look to use this method when visiting most places. Your body will always need a day or more to recover when travelling so make sure to adhere to your bodies needs before getting travel burnout.
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