Summer is usually a time for travel. Some people escape the heat of the plains and head for the hills. Others simply want to escape their daily routines and look for beaches and forests. The smartest ones find ways to cool off within their city – perhaps just indulging in delicious afternoon siestas.
I usually cringe when I buy airplane tickets, especially when I know that there are trains available. It is hard to go on two- or three-day train journeys with a small child, though, and so I started looking for ways to make the rest of my travel sustainable.
Here are my three basic hallmarks of a green traveller
1. Slow Transportation: Even if we fly to a destination, I try to drag everyone along on buses, trains, ferries, and trams (oh, you should check them out in Kolkata!) to explore the place. And on some mad moments, when the traffic looks ridiculous, walking is actually the fastest (and least painful) option. We have discovered great restaurants and delicious street food simply because we followed the locals into crowded places. There is charm and romance in slow travel, even if it means that we are sweating like pigs in the afternoon sun (but I hear that it is actually good for health).
2. Generate Less Trash: Travel is fun and a time to be relaxed, but does it have to come in the form of ice cream wrappers and rubber slippers chucked over a cliff or into the ocean? There is a (fairly broad) line between being carefree and being thoughtless.
Our garbage is strange and unusual for the rest of the living world. Birds and animals treat plastic trash like natural substances, and often suffer because they have eaten a shiny candy wrapper (or giant balls of disposable bags). Please carry your own cutlery or ask for reusable spoons. Take small boxes for snacks, and refill them from your hotel’s kitchen. Choose fresh fruits and vegetables from roadside vendors (and stop them from lovingly wrapping it in a plastic cover).
3. Refuse Souvenirs: In the Khasi Hills in Meghalaya, local tribes take care of sacred groves. These protected patches of forest land are fiercely guarded, and have formidable myths hanging over them. I was impressed when a guide told me that no one is allowed to take even a leaf or flower out of the sacred grove. At best, you can eat a fruit that’s fallen from the tree – but you must leave the seed behind. I thought about retaining that sensitivity and concern during all travel.
Many tourist destinations have popular souvenirs that deplete the local environment (sea shells, pine cones, feathers, turtle shells, bones, ivory). Some even sell knock-offs that have been mass produced in distant factories.
Before buying a keepsake, think about whether it will become a treasured part of your home. Photographs, sketches or thoughts in a journal are excellent ways of capturing a moment and creating a memory, without stomping all over the beautiful place you just visited.
Have you scrunched your eyes shut when you saw an endless lines of garbage heaps from a train window? Tell us how you want to be a lean, mean, green travelling machine.
