VALENTINES TO SLOW TRAVEL

Indians are opening up to the idea of Slow Travel, swapping packed itineraries for relaxed, immersive trips. Slow Travel is an offshoot of the Slow Food movement. Six travellers, who already have a head start, tell us the gains of going off the fast lane

In the 1980s, a young Italian, Carlo Petrini, lover of all things local, organiser of a folk festival, food critic of a few Communist newspapers, decided to defend the food of the Italian mamas served in neighbourhood cafés against mass-produced American burgers. The opening up of a McDonald’s in the heart of Rome had given him a jolt. He had visions of Italians wolfing down mounds of bread when, so far, they had been doing quite well eating the slow-cooked pastas and polenta or spearing a steak with a knife and coaxing meat onto the fork.

The culture of Slow – Slow Food, Slow City, Slow Living, among others – has a few mascots. One of them is Petrini. The slowest of creatures, the snail and the turtle, are the others. The champion of Slow Travel, an offshoot of these movements, in 2020, is surprisingly enough, the Indian tourist.

The Skyscanner APAC Travel Trends 2020 Report provides unique insights into the travelling habits of Indians. The Skyscanner website, used by over 100 million every month, in its survey of the latest travelling habits in India’s outbound market shows that Slow Travel is at the top of travellers’ priority lists this year.

This is the year Indians will not conform to the stereotype of the Indian tourist – be a torchbearer of travel in a rush; raise a flag at 10 different hot-spots, including two not mentioned in the travel brochure; expect Indian restaurants in remote corners of the earth and consider shopping the supreme cultural experience, second only to standing before the Eiffel Tower for a photograph.

But first things first. How do you travel slow? An offshoot of the slow movement, the principal idea behind Slow Travel is that in an age of speed, travel must be about slowing down. If you can ditch the flight, take a train. In places where you can do without a car, walk.

The process of travel must be long and unhurried; the pace of the holiday must be like the life as lived by locals. One must be open to discoveries, travel disruptions, cultural differences. And there should be no micromanagement of pleasure, no overarching master plan.

So, no more hitting the crisis button if parasailing from 9 am does not get over by 10 am in time for a dash to the curio shop before lunch begins at 12 pm. Slow Travel, at its basic, is more about the mindset and the choices you make during a vacation. It is an experience as wellsuited to a big city as to a small town or even your own hometown.

For example, in Rome, where people have a list of monuments and museums to see, you might just visit one and then walk off towards the old lanes and squares where the daily life of its locals is unfolding. Stop by a corner café for a meal and a coffee, and then strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. As the next stop is not planned, there is no limit to the duration of the chat.

In Slow Travel, there are no exact rules: you can go anywhere, anytime, and prolong the experience of being without a plan.

Deepa (she does not use her surname), a slow traveller, puts it this way: “There is no need to conclude anything. There is a deep commitment in the moment and in the people you meet in the course of your journey. Travel in this way makes you open to receiving many kindnesses along the way.”

In an essay on the subject, travel writer Pico Iyer says putting a pause on the pace that one is used to in daily life and concentrating on the process and experience of travel are his takeaways of Slow Travel.

“Slow travel comes to seem ever more tempting in an age of acceleration,” says Iyer. “This can take the form of simply unplugging; but it also speaks for the special, everyday allure of setting out on foot, of going to one place (and not 10) in 14 days, and sometimes of going somewhere to do nothing at all. This used to be known as idling, but in a multi-tasking world, in which we seem to be living at a pace dictated by machines, going at human speed suddenly begins to look like sanity and freedom.”

In India, more and more travellers are ready to switch their gear and take it slow. And some have done even more: changed their lifestyle to erase the difference between their life and their travels.