Slow Travel: What Happens When You Spend an Entire Day in One Place
What if you could spend an entire day only at a single place? It can be a temple, dam, riverside, a museum or anything such place.
Recently I took a trip to coastal Karnataka(Mangaluru, Udupi, Murudeshwar). 3 days full of traveling and covering multiple places. At some places I did feel like waiting more or maybe if I could have reached here at some other time of the day(evening instead of the hot afternoon). But then you wont be able to cover all places. This got me thinking what if you could spend an entire day only at a single place.
The Countercultural Idea
Simple idea but in today's world majority of the people would find such an idea a waste of time. But lets think about what happens if you do spend an entire day at a single place.
The Current Travel method
When you decide to visit a place, you would have heard of it before maybe done some basic google/wikipedia level reading of it or just get there knowing its one of the places to be visited.
Once you are there the initial few minutes go about figuring out how to proceed. One option being you follow what other people are doing. Or you find your own way to explore whatever catches your senses.
Then you click some initial photos of it and then some more if you finding something interesting. My observation is in the initial few minutes the place has your most attention. But ultimately is starts dropping. And as you proceed if the place is big you try to hurry up and maybe skip some parts.
There is always a limited time allocated to a place and there is always an urge to proceed fast to completely see it or you might have to skip some parts.
A Personal Example: The Wrong Time at Someshwar
There is also a realization that sometimes you came to a place at the wrong time of the day. Like for me when I visited Someshwar temple and beach it was afternoon and really hot. The surrounding of the place felt like it would be a much better one during evening or early morning. But unfortunately I didn't have that much time.
So now I come back to the initial question, what if I had an entire day to spend at Someshwar Temple and Beach?
How Places Communicate
I feel a place talks to you slowly. You have to pay attention to it. Walk a bit, sit down for sometime to soak in the surrounding and then roam around again. If a place is big sit at different spots and try to observe the views. Let the place communicate with you. Let your brain consume whatever the place has to offer. Spending a day you get to observe all the activities that happen in that place. What birds and animals came by, what were the other visitors doing. The various interplay of sunlight and shadows. There is no rush, no timeline.
What's Missing in Our Time
I believe this type of passive consumption of outside world is missing in today's time. Either you have the passive consumption of social media or the active consumption where you define what all you want to consume in a day(podcasts, blogs, youtube, places, etc)
A Different Approach to Travel
A slow travel method. Travel doesn't have to be hectic but we make it hectic by planning so many things and getting disappointed when planned things don't work out. When you are outside things would be random, expect the unexpected because it is not your daily cocoon from where you have showed up here.
What You Notice When You Slow Down
When you spend enough time you start noticing things you wouldn't have noticed if you were in a hurry.
One instance, when I visited the Kaup lighthouse / beach I didn't know that it was a Physical Shore Station(PSS) of National Automatic Identification System (NAIS). And actually there are 87 of them in India!! This was written on the info board near the lighthouse. I wonder how many people read it and then even looked it up.
A New Perspective
The whole thing was a new perspective for me. Something I would try to do more in future. Would love to hear from other people if they have experienced something similar.