Journey not destination: Youngsters embrace slow travel

The airline boom in India, particularly over the last decade, gave birth to a new section of travellers in the country – the millennials. With an ability to spend, the young jet-setters were willing to fly off to any remote part of the world to achieve an Instagram-worthy picture. As the current day has been posing severe challenges to the airline industry, which has turned unpredictable with flight delays and cancellations, the young are increasingly seen embracing train and bus rides and prefer long car and bike rides to a quick flight.

“Even as a child, I loved taking a train ride and still prefer to take it every time that I am travelling with my family or a group of friends and at times by myself. Though flights became a popular mode of transport for a period due to the time they save, many are choosing to take longer journeys for an enriching travel. A train journey allows one to soak in the landscapes and the nature while passing by. One gets to meet new people from different cultures and see newer perspectives,” 22-year-old accounting student Sri Venkatesh tells DT Next.

Calling himself a ‘rail fan’, the travel blogger has been travelling extensively across the country for the past 6 years and has his social media filled with picturesque shots of the iconic Indian Railways, which in turn featured one of his train images for the Konkan Railway website.

For avid biker Ashish Nawalgaria, who has been riding across the length and breadth of the country on his bike for the past 15 years, riding allows the independence to truly visit a place. “We are dependent on the carriers for our flights, but riding gives complete freedom to explore any region. Once in every three months, along with a group of friends, I take up a riding trip to some part of the country to catch a break from the daily life. We ride to enjoy the route as well as the place we visit. We also see many bikers and biking clubs coming up across to truly enjoy travel,” elaborates Ashish, who works as a building contractor in the city.

Car-pooling is also becoming increasingly popular among young travellers, allowing them to take the less-trodden routes and be truly nestled in the nature. A 34-year-old IT professional Bharat Naidu finds youngsters changing their mindsets about travel. “At a point, many conceived travel as something that can only be luxury-filled. With many people being concerned about where they spend their money — they choose to take train rides, car-pool or hitch-hike so as to save their money, while also making quality use of their time. Our country has a well-connected public transport system, which one learns to appreciate over train and bus journeys,” stresses Bharat.

It is travellers like these who are marking the revival of slow travel movement in our country — which began in the 1980s in Europe in a bid to resist the speed and instead absorb a region’s culture and develop a connection with it over a bike or car ride.