With every day that goes by, we are approaching irreversible changes in the delicate balance of our ecosystems. Our beautiful blue planet is threatened by numerous activities, not least travel. As we expand our opportunities to explore the world we live in, we leave a thick footprint that can have disastrous consequences.
However, travel remains a necessary antidote to everyday stress; and there are several positive effects tourism has on the environment. Through sustainable tourism, we can reconcile our need to discover new places with the needs of fragile ecosystems. To this end, Ellie Cleary takes a lead role in sharing this knowledge about green tourism through her popular blogs: Soul Travel and Soul Travel India.
Ellie is a transformative and sustainable tour guide currently based in her hometown of London. In the past she has lived in India, the Netherlands and Canada. Her work on sustainable tourism has been featured by leading travel brands like Lonely Planet and she loves helping travelers discover their all time favorite: India. Here’s what she had to say when we met her on this world tourism day.
What inspired you to travel logging?
I ended my 11-year corporate career in hospitality and tourism in 2016 to be committed to responsible and sustainable travel. At the time, I had no idea what that would look like. I had already started a blog the year before (soultravelblog.com) while traveling. I decided to use the blog as a starting point to encourage discussions and ideas around sustainable travel and to give advice to travelers who want to make their own travel decisions more consciously based on my local experience.
It turned out to be a great way to connect with travel companies, travelers, and responsible tourism organizations who all wanted to do the same thing when responsible travel was still a very small niche. The blog has grown since 2016 and in 2018 I launched a website dedicated to responsible travel in India (soultravelindia.com), this is the place that keeps calling me back.
How would you describe sustainable travel? Why is it so important in this day and age?
For me, connecting to and being considerate of the places we travel to are the key to sustainable / responsible travel. When we care about where we are and connect to that place, we become more aware of the impact we are having – are we paying attention to the environment? Are we careful with resources? Or are we assuming we can move on without considering our impact?
This is more important than ever as the world opens up again after a pandemic and we all try to enjoy the outdoors and the outdoors. When we connect to a place, we also respect the people there and different cultures and approaches, and by being open to different ideas we can learn a lot about ourselves and others.
Please tell us some absolute musts that travelers in India must observe in order to practice sustainable travel.
Flying is a difficult subject in these times as the CO2 emissions are immense. So if we have the choice of taking a train or road transport rather than flying, the benefits are enormous. It’s usually a much more interesting way to travel too!
As we travel more again after the pandemic, we have an unprecedented opportunity to clean up travel – to stop polluting our planet, pour concrete into indigenous cultures, and treat the world as an amusement park.
Wherever we are in the world, I believe we have the same responsibility to respect the places we visit – and that starts with respect for nature. Now that we all want to spend time outdoors after the lockdown, I think we need to appreciate the great outdoors by properly enjoying the experience and engaging in more outdoor activities like hiking, camping, wildlife watching, and the like – rather than just Head out into nature to take a selfie and get back in the car.
Home to such incredible biodiversity, India is one of the few places in the world that has such residual wildlife abundance and that is something that really needs to be protected, along with the indigenous and tribal cultures of those who have lived on the land for so long. We can learn so much from nature if we take the time to really respect, listen, and observe it instead of taking it for granted or just treating it as an Instagram background.
How can we promote sustainable travel in India through policies and regulations?
One of the first steps would be to market a wider range of travel destinations to avoid everyone going to the same places for short breaks – promoting less popular alternatives could help reduce overcrowding. However, it is just as important to raise awareness of the use of resources – water is under high pressure in many places and visitors do not know anything about it. Improving waste management and banning single-use plastic – as some areas have already done – would also be of great help.
Then there is the level of working with local communities to ask how tourism should work in their region – this has been done very successfully in Kerala and some other areas and is a role model for other states to draw inspiration from .
What do you enjoy most about traveling?
For me, the best thing about traveling is that it opens our eyes to the beautiful differences in our world between places, people and cultures … and at the same time realizes that we are not very different from one another, no matter where we are born and we are in our humanity united. I love the awareness of ourselves that arises when we really open our eyes and experience new surroundings.
Please share one of your favorite travel experiences?
My favorite accommodations in India are host families with families because not only is the food always better when it is homemade, but I’ve also found that it gives me a lot more insight into a place and its culture.
One of my favorites so far (and there are many) is in Kutch, Gujarat where Kutch Adventures India is working on a sustainable community tourism model that showcases local handicrafts and also works with local block printers to uphold traditional methods of fabric making and using sustainable dyes for dyeing.
Kuldip, the founder, opens his family’s home to tourists and guides them through the various villages and communities of Kutch with which he has developed close relationships and who are in a unique position to share the stories of the various indigenous cultures of the area.
I loved my time there as it gave me a very different taste of India and is an area that is less known to foreign tourists but so rich in its culture.
What top ecotourism destinations in India would you like to suggest?
- Bandipur and Nagarhole in Karnataka for incredible nature and wildlife safaris.
- Wayanad, Kerala for a range of homestay and community tourism initiatives such as Kabini Tourism.
- Trekking (not a road trip) in Ladakh to learn more about how breathtaking this fragile mountain desert is but is pressured by mass tourism.
- Spend the night on the backwaters of inland Goa or on a spice plantation, away from the crowds on the beaches.
What are some of the biggest challenges in travel logging?
Social media has changed the way we travel and I think twice before posting a photo of a place incapable of handling crowds. So often, we don’t take the time to read the captions or learn the full history of the places we visit and so miss the opportunity to learn something on our travels.
My intention is always to share the type of travel that has a better impact, but I know that often this message doesn’t get through and people just want to do the same thing and go to the same old crowded places. Ultimately, we have to believe that travel that benefits everyone is possible.
How has COVID-19 changed travel in India? How can we use this break to align the tourism sector with sustainability?
For me personally, I have not been able to return to India since 2019 as the country’s borders have been closed throughout the pandemic so I hope to return soon.
We are now at a crossroads where we have the opportunity to travel more consciously and help the tourism industry return by selecting companies that are committed to green, sustainable travel at the grassroots.
There are so many wonderful responsible tourism initiatives in India doing all of these things – the greatest way to make a difference is by helping them so that they can make a difference in their communities and areas. the Responsible Tourism India Website is also filled with suggestions.
For more of Ellie’s amazing work, check out her Instagram.
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