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I hav to say tourism here is minimal with fewer than 2 million people visiting almost entirely on a tour of the "Stans" including either Uzbekistan or other countries.
This is because it is easy to drive over from Tashkent or Samarkand, both of which are about 1-2h from the land border.
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Tajik people are super kind; I have been invited for tea a few times and both my driver and guide are extremely hospitable and caring. Above is her and I last night on a night out to the fanciest restaurant in town.
I will also say I have seen some of the craziest driving and craziest roads, including a dark, dusty and sometimes rainy 5km long tunnel crossing the Fann Mountains that was built a few years ago and is the scariest place I have ever driven through...
I will return to Uzbekistan tomorrow to end my scouting trip. Join the waitlist if you'd like to visit the country with us.
And if you would like to share tips on either Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, reply to this email and let me know. If there is enough interest, I will put together a newsletter with travel tips for each.
This week's podcast episode is all about traveling unplugged. I am talking to Lisa, who has been traveling on short trips in Europe without any electronics for the last 2 years.
We talk about what it takes to travel without a phone, what challenges she faces and the serendipity that prompted it all.
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Now, on to this week's travel tip: As the year end approaches and I spend a few days in countries that receive fewer tourists, it made me reflect on the travel trends we should really retire.
Travel trends we should retire
There are many travel trends shaping the industry and the ways we travel.
Many of them are great: Regenerative travel, responsible and ethical travel, environmentally friendly travel or the movement to decolonise travel come to mind.
But there are also many trends that are destructive, irresponsible or just simply bad for places, wildlife and communities.
As with everything that has to do with travel, these are rarely black and white trends, and the critical part is to consider the pros and cons and the specific circumstances before deciding whether you want to participate in them.
Hit and run tourism
Have you ever seen travelers in a bus, moving around a place, getting on and off the bus for a 5min picture stop and then leaving.
They don't enjoy the local food, they may even buy a sandwich from a cafe or supermarket, they don't talk to the people either, and all they care about is seeing as much of a place as possible, ticking boxes, without learning much about it, without interacting with it.
This type of travel does not contribute to the communities, it only crowds its streets and roads, it makes life for people living there worst and it does not enrich the traveler.
Last chance tourism (when it does not prompt stewardship)
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You have seen the podcast episode we published a couple of weeks ago where we talked precisely about thisL Visiting places that are about to change irrevocably before it does, while at the same time, we may be contributing to what is making it disappear.
If the trip does not inspire stewardship towards its conservation and the conservation of similar places, the trip may not have contributed to its preservation.
Stewardship typically comes with deeper understanding of the challenges of the place, landscape, species, neighbourhood, etc. and connection with the people it affects, which in turn inspires action.
Listen to our podcast episode on this topic.
Poverty tourism
Objectifying poverty and turning it into a spectacle for visitors to watch without communities being involved, benefiting from and controlling the narrative.
Children are photographed, daily struggles are turned into a show and romanticised without understanding the nuances of the challenges or the complex realities that are simplified into a short explanation.
The communities featured hardly benefit from these tours and have little say into what is being said and how, they have essentially been turned into animals in a zoo.
There are various tours around the world that will take you to marginalized, low-income urban or rural areas such as the favelas of Rio. The key for these tours to be a positive experience for the communities lies on who leads them, who defines the stories told and how are the people living there portrayed.
Only book tours that:
- Are led and organized by the community, with all proceed going to them
- The stories told and the narrative is controlled by the community, not an outsider
- Dignity is preserved, photos of children of people's private lives are not allowed and they are not treated like objects
Cultural appropriation (vs cultural appreciation)
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This is an old concept that was described in academia as "cultural artifacts or customs are stripped of their original meaning, misused as costumes, or monetized without permission or respect from the source community."
The key for an activity to be considered cultural appreciation and not appropriation lies in whether you are led into the culture by an insider who tells you about the tradition, costume or item, who has invited you to try or experience it in a way that allows you to honor and respect it.
It would be the difference between wearing a sari to an Indian wedding with a specific dress code and the help of a friend to choose it vs. wearing a sari as Halloween costume.
Or wearing an indigenous decorative item such as a piece of of body jewelry during a visit to a community that explains its meaning and use vs. buying a plastic one to wear to a dress up party.
Seeing the world through your camera
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This may sound hypocritical coming from someone who is always on her phone, but such is the nature of my job, running around the clock with partners, guides, tours and guests in pretty much all time zones.
For the regular traveler, it seems as if traveling never happened unless every minute of it was captured by a camera.
As a result, we attend a cooking class through the phone, enjoy the view in on a train through the lens, and while a guide is explaining something to us, we are on our phone taking photos, videos, checking on Google.
We go on safari and Google everything the guide says and then question what they have said. We look at the photos of a place on Google before going and discard places that don't look beautiful enough, who cares about the food.
And don't get me started on photographing everything we eat until we get the right shot and the food is cold.
I think this is a trend that we can retire. Maybe our episode with Liza this week will inspire you to travel unplugged.
Tags: Solo Female Travelers
