Jay Joshi
When a typical Indian middle-class person thinks about travelling, two things come first to their mind: the most popular tourist spots, and the most dangerous places and information about a place. “Many Indian travellers are not open to concepts such as backpacking or low-cost travelling” says Ramchandra Salgaonkar, Co-Founder of Soul Travelling, a travel firm that focuses on creating out-of-the-box travel experiences. Instead of organising typical elaborate tours, Soul Travelling helps individuals travel on their own by providing low-cost travel ideas and offering the training and tips on how to go about low-cost travelling.
Soul Travelling is set to host an event this week about dangerous places to travel to, but the talk has a deeper purpose than just highlighting the dangers in places mentioned in the even ie Nigeria, Iran, and Papua New Guinea. “Through this talk, we want to highlight that the dangers are only in the minds of people.” says Salgaonkar. “People have to understand what exactly is the danger and how it affects them as a traveller. For instance when Iran comes to our mind, we immediately think that it is dangerous. Having this perspective at the start itself makes us highlight all the dangers in that place. We intend to change such perspectives of travellers.”
“It is not to say “these places are dangerous, so, don’t travel there,” but instead to highlight the many good reasons to visit these places” says Varun Hegde, Co-Founder of Soul Travelling, , while Ramchandra adds- “We are not saying these places aren’t dangerous, but they offer some really offbeat tourism experiences that you can take.”
Dangerous countries featured in the event include Iran, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea. Here, one might ask the question, why a small country such as Papua New Guinea is being included in the list of dangerous countries. “Well, that’s because the country is still unexplored,” says Hansel Vas, one of the speakers at the upcoming event. “The place opened up to the Western world quite late, and in many areas, the old tribal laws are still followed” he informs, adding that 80% of the country is a forest.
That said, dangers are of two types: the ones posed by climate and geography of a region, about which you know, and can prepare for, and the ones that are unexpected, things like socio-political situations which you cannot predict, says Ramchandra, informing that the event shall address the second type of situations, elaborating on what one could do when stuck in such dangerous situations.
Changing people’s perceptions is the core idea at Soul travelling, and it applies to locals as well as tourists, informs Ramchandra explaining the purpose behind city trails organised by Soul Travelling. “We believe that locals too should take our city trails and understand what treasures their city holds. Once they understand it, then they appreciate and talk about it. Similarly, there are tourists who come to Goa with a particular perception -beaches, liquor, and all negative things that come with it. We are planning to change this perception too.” Presently, about 80 % of the firm’s clientele is locals, Ramchandra adds.
“Right now there is this model of sightseeing et al, but we are trying to build a model where it is more of travelling with purpose and with experience, and that is for everyone. We cannot target only tourists. In fact, Goans too should seek to travel differently when they go elsewhere” says Hegde. Walking trails offer unique experience and help change people’s mindset in that when people travel to other places too, they prefer walking through the city, he informs.
While offering city walks, night trails and food trails to inbound tourists and locals in Goa, Soul Travelling also offers backpacking trips to destinations such as Sri Lanka, Europe etc, but the model for these trips is different, explains Ramchandra “We don’t handle your bookings and we don’t have an itinerary. We ask you what you want to do, and train you to book your own tour. Even if you want to pay us more, we don’t do that. We send you links so you do your own bookings. And when you land in a city, you decide what you want to do.” this thus gives an individual the confidence to arrange their trip on their own when they travel the next time. “We do not do anything a travel agency does” Ramchandra quips. The objective of the company is to encourage offbeat travelling and create solo travellers. With a view to educate travellers, the firm has held a number of travel talks related to various destinations, he informs.
“People generally think of travel as something to be done when they have free time. We intend to make travel a part of your life” says Varun Hegde. “Travel develops you as a person. For instance when you have travelled in a foreign country all on your own, you have gained some unique training and confidence.”
(A travel talk on ‘Visiting dangerous places in the world: Nigeria, Iran and Papua Guinea’ by Hansel Vaz and co-organised by Soul Travelling and The International Centre, Goa will be held at ICG, Dona Paula on Saturday, July 7 from 5-7pm)
