Travelling responsibly in Covid times

People are flocking to different places and violating safety norms.

Wait, hold on! Are you also facing this weird situation, where your heart perpetually wants to travel somewhere, but your mind says, “No?” Well, I really that is the case! Covid-19 has shut down the world, and we have been cooped inside concrete walls, exhausted by months of being locked down.

The world is now slowly opening up, and even if we are not already travelling, many of us are ready to start booking future trips. The question is: is it okay to venture out and explore places with complete disregard for public health safety and social distancing? Is it okay to give in to the fernweh (German for a longing to see far-flung places beyond our doorstep) tickling us, while flouting mask norms?

Tourism and hospitality have been badly affected, and while they need our support to get back on their feet, is it okay to let our guards down by going out and about without following Covid-appropriate behaviour? Most of us want to break free from the monotony of lockdown, but wouldn’t it be lovely if we did all of this with a pragmatic approach?

Not so long ago, people were running around to find beds for their loved ones. Yet, today, they are flocking to different places, violating safety norms. Hordes of tourists entered the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh after it eased restrictions. There were scary clips from Kempty Falls, Mussoorie, where hundreds of mask-less tourists mobbed the waterfall (facing flak on social media), while Birmingham parks and Brighton beach reported swarms of tourists luxuriating in the greenery and waves.

Is this how we plan to support the tourism sector? This attitude will only exacerbate the problem, and do more harm than good. Such expeditions not only put you at risk, but also the locals.

Now that it’s clear that life can’t go on as normal, at least in the foreseeable future, we might as well go back to the roots of why we travel. Maybe it’s nature’s way of telling us to slow down. Instead of doing asinine touristy things, we all can try and be responsible travellers, no?

My husband and I are travel content creators from India. For us, travelling is like breathing. As people who spend most of their months exploring places and showcasing them to the world, it’s not been easy for us: just like the tourism sector, travel bloggers, too, have been hit hard. The pandemic has affected our finances as blogging is our major source of income. So, after rehashing old content for about ten months, we decided to move closer to nature, away from the hustle bustle of city life. We not only wanted to make the most of this time by creating a bank of interesting stories, but also relish the thought of living slow, and putting everything aside to refresh our mind and soul. We got an RT PCR test done, booked a one-way ticket from Delhi to Goa, and rented an Airbnb indefinitely. Back then, the Goan government had scrapped all Covid-related travel restrictions, and so it wasn’t mandatory to get an RT PCR report before entering the state. But we wouldn’t recommend you not do the test before travelling. Given how much we have been grappling with, this is the most basic check any of us needs to do, before we venture out. The whole idea is to not put the local community at risk, and prevent the spread of the virus.

That being said, we are praying hard for Mother Earth to heal, and hoping we could shine that bit brighter, love with more intensity, live with more zest and bring more kindness into our lives. Maybe, just maybe, in doing so, we can leave behind the smorgasbord of negative emotions, and create a mutual brightness so strong, darkness won’t have a corner to hide in.

(Nishita and her husband Siddharth Sharma are travel bloggers based in India, and are popularly known as ThatNomadCouple. Their Insta handle is @that_nomadcouple, and they blog at www.thatnomadcouple.com)

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