Slow Travel: It’s the Journey, Not the Destination
You can only encounter your life in the present moment.
You might have heard of Slow Food, but have you ever heard of Slow Travel?
There are many other names for it, such as Low-impact travel or Mindful Travel, but it comes down to a famous quote: “It’s the journey, not the destination”. There is no place better than Africa to live out this motto, and in our humble opinion, no tour operator which understand this better than MoAfrika Tours.
Travel is often our one chance to explore the world, and we like to make the week or two that we are away from home count, so usually we squeeze as much as we can into the itinerary. Many tours are famous for this now, such as the Contiki Tour which offers a round the world in 80 days type of experience.
This type of travel is what Slow Travel flips on its head.
Instead of rushing on to the next attraction, disciples of Slow Travel will disappear into a treehouse lodge in the Kruger National Park and explore all that this international treasure of a wildlife park offers with an experienced tour operator sensitive to their journey.
As a concept, this might give you a feel for how Slow Travel might differ to standard travel: Imagine your best cousin is living in a wonderful far-off country you would like to visit, and that you are able to spend a few nights in her house. You would then explore the surroundings on your own time and pursue anything that peaks your interest and when you get good weather, you might even just take a snooze on the lawn.
In contrast, many people don’t know any other way to travel but to move about with a mental tick-box of things they “must see, and must do”. We get this. We are lucky enough to be able to offer amazing experiences like the Flight of Angels Helicopter trip, where you fly over Victoria Falls, a Zambezi Sunset Cruise, camping adventures in Pilanesberg National Park, and a myriad of unforgettable experiences in places like Namibia and Botswana that will give you all the feels. To give you more time to take it all in we have structured our tour packages to take place over a longer period.
What a wonderful idea it is. Many people are anxious, hurried, harassed and confused while travelling through a foreign land. There’s a long list of activities, switching from planes to trains and then when you finally arrive you might stand in long queues because you arrived a bit late to a very popular attraction. One thing that irritates tourists are other tourists, and with Slow Travel you have the opportunity to miss the crowds and get better value out of your experience.
Slow Travel as a concept really reminds one of the Grand Tour but without the upper crust and unlimited funds part, although mingling with local citizens and improving your language skills still rings true.
The New York Times in 2008 described the Grand Tour in this way:
“Three hundred years ago, wealthy young Englishmen began taking a post-Oxbridge trek through France and Italy in search of art, culture and the roots of Western civilization. With nearly unlimited funds, aristocratic connections and months (or years) to roam, they commissioned paintings, perfected their language skills and mingled with the upper crust of the Continent.”
The essence of Slow Travel is that you experience what is in front of you in an unhurried way, drinking in the experience, making it part of your DNA so to speak. Your carbon footprint is also lighter if you do less train and plane hopping. And instead of going for the high-speed magnetic lift train, why not opt for a nice and slow ride on the back of a safari vehicle in the Kruger, or explore on foot on a Namibian beach.
Your experience of any destination will be richer if you take the Slow Travel approach throughout the journey.
With Slow Travel you get to experience things in a mentally digestible fashion which means you will savour that African sunset so much more, and reminisce about it when you are in your rocking chair at 80. This seems an improvement on remembering that you had 5 minutes to see something, and then you were shuffled off the next attraction.
This is not to say you should just miss out on what you dearly want to see, but you might want to not cram your list so full of to-do’s. As with anything, an experience, or even a piece of art, needs space around it for it to be appreciated.
Reminder, take a photo, but then remember to put the camera down, and just enjoy the moment. Remember Slow Travel is a mindset.
Instead of going around the world in 80 days, why not Slow Travel through Soweto in a night, or take a Grand Tour to the Kruger National Park, and explore the depth of the experience by getting in tune with the wild ecosystem and rhythm of the animals of Africa.
