Canada’s G Adventures is helping poor Indian women become cab drivers for safety of foreign female travellers visiting India
Let’s talk responsible travel.
Canadians travel for a variety of reasons, from family vacations, to business, adventure, wellness and self-development journeys. Regardless of the purpose, we can all be responsible travellers when it comes to respecting planet Earth and the people we share it with.
A few years ago, I was introduced to the tribes in northeast India (Assam, Meghalaya) and that opportunity taught me that visiting locals in their lands is a privilege, and it opened my eyes to how we impact the people and places we visit. Furthermore, as much as I have fallen in love with India, I found the volume of discarded plastic heartbreaking, but it showed me how important it is as a traveller to be responsible even with small things like a plastic water bottle.
And so, it prompted my awakening to sustainable travel.
According to UNESCO, the aim of sustainable tourism is to maximize benefits such as job creation, foreign exchange earnings and new infrastructure while safeguarding cultural heritage and living culture and minimizing negative environmental and social impacts, especially of mass tourism.
A growing number of travel companies are providing tailored offerings for tourists who are interested in making a positive impact in the places they visit, whether it is doing something beneficial for the environment, boosting employment for locals or helping to save endangered species.
One Indian company making inroads in responsible tourism is Delhi-based Vasco Travel, a family-run travel company in the inbound Indian tourism market, spanning three generations of ownership. I sat down with Vikas Abbott, managing director (also a friend of mine), and asked about his thoughts on sustainable tourism. He is seeing a definite trend.
“There is growth in the area of sustainable tourism,” says Abbott. “It is increasingly important to promote responsible tourism in India to generate awareness amongst masses towards eco-friendly practices, which would go a long way in improving the tourism infrastructure of off-beat destinations and add value to overall travel experience of visitors.”
Another trend Abbott is seeing is an “evolution of thinking of travel.” How we think about travel is changing. Vasco is evolving to match it. Vasco plants five trees for each travel guest; promotes hotels that involve the local communities that help them generate employment and promote dying arts in India; and its unique concept, Fill Your Bag, that advises travellers to take needed items, such as pens and books, directly to the people who need them in developing nations.
Other companies are taking extreme initiatives to be eco-friendly and responsible. To help tackle plastic pollution, in December, Portuguese airline, Hi Fly, launched the first flight in the world with zero single-use plastic on board. Intrepid Travel, one of the first carbon-neutral tour operators, no longer offers elephant rides on its trips. And the cool “in business to change people’s lives” Canadian travel company, G Adventures, has partnered with India’s Azad Foundation on a Women on Wheels project, which empowers poor Indian women by training them to become drivers and then hiring them to provide safe transportation for female tourists travelling on their own with G Adventures.
What are you doing to be a responsible traveller? I’d love to hear from you.
(Shannon Skinner is an award-winning creator/host of ExtraodinaryWomenTV.com, author, radio host, international speaker and travel writer. More information at ShannonSkinner.com. Tweet @Shannon_Skinner)
ALSO BY SHANNON SKINNER: Yoga in Delhi, monsoon fun in Mumbai and whale-watching in the Azores
