Traveling is a way of life, People say, it is beneficial, liberating, rejuvenating, enlightening, and whatnot. There is some experience we get and there are so many things we learn when we travel. If these experiences have so much impact on our lives, imagine the impact traveling has in the world. In the meantime, sometimes we forget about the environment for the sake of our happiness and start harming it. So let us know the new trends, challenges, and possibilities of sustainable traveling in India.
Evolving & Breaking the Old Barriers
There are so many different traveling styles nowadays people enjoy, including Workation, Staycation, Backpacking, Solo Travelling and many more. There is a whole clan of youngsters who are trying to break the conventional path of traveling and treading into new lesser-traveled pastures.
There are so many professionals who are either opting to travel and work from different destinations via Home Stays, Hostels, or Service Apartments. There are people who are done with their 9 to 5 jobs and have taken a sabbatical while choosing a staycation to discover and explore themselves and spend time with themselves to learn new things and deciding on new things they wanna do in the near future.
The Challenges
The Indian Traveler\’s carbon footprint is the fourth largest in the world as per the study conducted in 2018 and ironically the tourism industry definitely had a huge impact on our environment and wildlife. People are building more hotels and resorts in the natural habitat, the cutting of trees because of it, the pollution caused by the operations of construction, and the effect on the local community are the main challenges for sustainable travelers.
On one hand the travel industry is generating employment and growth opportunities for the youth of India and local communities as well, on the other hand, all this mindless growth is happening at the cost of killing the same habitat on which they are thriving.
New Trends
The travel industry is evolving tremendously and so do the travelers. The latest trend of sustainable community hostels and Eco-stays or home-stays has given people new hope and also a solution to the challenges that we are facing.
There are community spaces and Eco-friendly accommodations in India that are either made of mud, stone, or wood thus promoting local architecture. The food served in these Eco-spaces is cooked from the local farm that is organic and is more hygienic and healthy. They encourage organic farming to take measures like solar power panels into account to generate electricity, rainwater harvesting is a few of the measures that are being practiced to contain the pollution.
These Eco-spaces are either being managed by locals or young professionals who are sensitive towards the environment and want to make changes in the travel industry. They aspire to create a space where people from different walks of life can come together and contribute to the environment for sustainable development and save the flora and fauna of their surroundings.
Traveling for Environment
The trend of sustainable traveling is not new and it has been successfully practiced all over the world and in India too. The only thing is that now it\’s been widespread in all parts of India via these small and medium community spaces while spreading awareness among the people.
The idea behind the concept is to sensitize the travelers to resist their habits of littering and be more proactive towards their surroundings.
