For many of us, 2020 feels like it never really took place. In the pandemic world, exploring far-flung places is going to be harder. I found a new kind of travel to keep my wanderlust coming amidst the home confines. It beats me to see how passionate travellers and industry experts are pushing boundaries to open new vistas, through which we can travel, without moving an inch. That is travel, from the comfort of home, by click of a finger.
A take over of online tours in the travel scene has opened a virtual space to laugh, to know, and celebrate the world in which we live. Many of us have felt a bit like Rapunzel, trapped inside, staring out of the window, wondering how the world looked outside. I could feel this despair too. It is signing in to virtual tours helped me figure out, we are all the same. We bond over music, food, travel, art, and stories of the world. And that was exhilarating as a travel writer. Here is my list of 7 best ways to travel without moving an inch, to consider right now.
Guest Blogger: Satarupa Datta, Travel Hand Made
Disclosure: Our site contains Affiliate Links. As an Amazon Associate we also earn from qualifying purchases. Clicking an Affiliate Link and purshasing something we recommend, won't cost you anything extra - it probably will save you some bucks. It will though give us a small comission which will help this site remaining a free resource for travellers to explore our world together.
1. Week Without Walls
Tigerwalah, a wildlife safari specialist in India, came up with a novel plan of bringing kids closer to nature, through a series of online sessions on Indian wildlife. Better still, this knowledge sharing was through interactive workshops, quizzes, and other planned activities. They call this - week without walls. A week into the world of birds, identifying their language, backyard birding, animal migration, big cats of India, and many unique online forest awareness programs for kids. Some interactive sessions go about sharing the world of creepy crawlies, animal communication, tribes of India and their art to DIY, and answering all 'why's and how's' coming from age groups of 7 to 14. All this from the comfort of your home.
That is not all. Once the forest of Kanha opened gates to visitors, Tigerwalah and team went beyond the realm of the ordinary, opting for their jungle staycation to teach kids the language of the forest. These Indian wildlife scenes -going-online for kids are that thread to understand the Indian jungles and mystery abounding in every nook. After all, who can resist star-gazing under the narrative of an expert astronomer? - All part of the kids' workshop. If you’re in a dilemma of how to engage kids in lockdown, sign up for a thrilling adventure with a week without walls online sessions.
Sometimes, something as simple as nature does the trick. So take a walk on the wild side when the world is treading on thin ice.
2. Traverse Journeys’s Travels Talks
A female-founded company led by a globe-trotting duo with over 20 years of combined experience in the tourism industry, Traverse Journeys provides small-group, impact focused trips for the conscious traveler. They encourage us travelers to be mindful about the impact our adventures have on the places we visit, both the people who call that place home and the nature and environment surrounding it.
The trips foster cross-cultural exchange and give insight into local communities and what's important to them. During COVID times, where most of us are grounded, the gals at Traverse are providing free travel talks and virtual tours. Some popular recent events have been "visits" from the comfort of your home to Iceland, Costa Rica, and Mexico with travel talks on useful topics ranging from Travel Insurance to Yoga Retreats to Safety in Times of COVID. You can get free access to past events here and see the uncomping chats here. Also check out their tour destinations for when we're back out in the world again!
3. And Beyond’s Wild Watch
A shout of praise for And Beyond as one of the best travel experts is not enough. Through And Beyond safari’s and luxury lodges, one can find ample opportunity to explore stunning landscapes while indulging in never-before experiences at the most luxurious of settings. Once entered into the And Beyond cosmos, one is bound to come close to their conservation programs and you must know a part of the tour package goes in the conservation and expansion of wildlife reserves. With this in mind, one should know, their Africa tours are one unrivaled in wildlife sightings, hospitality, and expert guides. Among other feats, their virtual safaris recently introduced as Wild Watch Live Drive is unmissable.
Covid 19 travel restrictions, sparked off this initiative of live safaris. It is called live because, And Beyond collaborated with wildlife live broadcasting experts, WildEarth, to stream (in real time) twice-daily, three-hour long game drives from some of their And Beyond African wildlife reserves. It doesnot end here, you can come up with your questions followed by #wildearth and the expert guides join in a live chat to answer all queries.
I was thrilled to be in rounds of an afternoon safari, live from Masai Mara, Kenya, where the naturalist, followed a herd of elephants on their way to their watering holes to cool off the heat. He sums up the experience saying, a day without elephants, in Africa, is a day without sunshine. Another splendid leopard sighting was at Ngala, South Africa, a leopard rests on a termite ridge silhouetted against the afternoon sepia sky.
Find out more on virtual series of how And Beyond is bringing the wilderness to us. Check out
their site to know how to wildwatch. https://www.andbeyond.com/andbeyond-tv/wildwatch-live/
4. Travel from Home through Windowswap
Imagine sitting at your desk or lounging in your living room as you gaze out your window at an unfamiliar exterior. Maybe you’re looking at a distant tree-line or a backyard garden. But after a little while, you decide you’d like to be looking at something else. And then, with the click of a mouse, the scene on the other side of your window is a sprawling cityscape or a windy beachside. That is what windowswap does - a quarantine project started by an Indian couple based out of Singapore, where you can open a new window on somewhere in the world. The view you get might be from a window in Scotland, Australia, Portugal, USA, sitting at your own home.
It is that simple, people across the world are sharing, 10 minute, horizontal views outside their windows. While browsing on a series of window views, I stopped at some of the beautiful views, one at Planitero, in the island of Peloponnese, Greece. It leads to a mountain village, dotted with hilltop houses, almost lulling me to an afternoon nap. Next, I was off to Blackness, Scotland. The window took me to vast expanses of a Scottish moor. And I made a day of it, gazing to my heart’s content. If you feel caged in the great pandemic, just a click here, https://window-swap.com/ could set you off to some faraway land, cost-free.
5. Airbnb Experiences
Like a seagull’s dive bombing a bucket of fries, the pandemic too has shattered our travel plans for this year. But the good news comes as many sorted their coming year’s travel wish list and so did I. Morocco it is, with the maximum number of days in Marrakech. Aiming to crack the best holiday ideas into my itinerary, I signed in the Airbnb online experiences, in which a local travel expert helped transport me virtually to some of the intriguing places of Marrakech.
The session was not a guidebook, blabbering of best places to see & eat rather, spilling out of rare insights, helping to plan better, even smarter. There's a little of everything in Marrakech, making the travelers' time management the most crucial. That comes down to one thing, picking a convenient locale, close to top attractions.
Next he puts forward how to shrug off the wrangling scenes of the vibrant souks; the authentic hammam exfoliate feel compared to the new age luxury ones, also, tagine and couscous are not the only delicacies to tuck in, and a walk inside the medina, kasbah, riyadh could be nothing less than an open-air, architecture class even though you’re not a student in one. And many more such insights that create enough curiosity of what lies behind the walls of Marrakech.
6. Vino Vacation from Home
The world has been dealing with a sea of change. This change touched on the etiquette of wine tastings as well. Today many crave for wine vacations, brushing off the communal drinking experience it exudes, probing as an antonym to social distancing. So what you can’t go to the vineyard, wineries across the world are letting you buy a bottle, and participate in virtual tastings. Bring a taste of Napa valley or Sonoma’s best wineries to your home by signing up for an authentic wine delivery along with a virtual tour. The tours also let you soak in centuries of wine-making heritage and tradition of California’s most prestigious terroirs, like Napa Valley or Sonoma County, through the zoom window, a gateway to the outside world.
Discovery wines have organized many wine tasting sessions and events around california’s best wineries. Enjoy the first-ever family estate collections of Pinot noir and Chardonnay of the Sonoma county, this september. To know more about how to book the bottles and to get invited for a hour of tasting, check out their sites: https://discovercaliforniawines.com/events/ for a whole lot of wine tasting options. What a way to keep your spirits high!
7. Holidaying by good reads
They let you travel without moving your feet, one of Jhumpa Lahiri’s lines from her bestseller Namesake holds true at all times. Many would find a bit daunting going in for 500 pages and more, at a time when your mind is on many things. Why not go through some of the new digital publication that are featuring out of the box 5 min travel stories, to keep us hooked.
Travel with the stories and expeditions of Sidetracked magazine. I travelled through the immersive narrative and soul-stirring photographs, of a three-week journey that takes a writer from the Tibetan tracts of rural Yunnan province to the foot camp of Mount Everest in search of kora. All over Tibet, pilgrims travel to walk a route around a holy site and perform a ceremony of prayer to the gods of Tibetan Buddhism, that is called kora. I felt a flutter in my heart reading the story of two extraordinary mountain climbers who took on the extreme adventure of climbing the amazing desert towers in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Intrepid Times, another platform that publish beautiful travel articles break ing every rule in the game and inspiring budding writers to to be able to write in such clarity.
I was engrossed by a story where the writer was crossing into Zimbabwe from Zambia to take in the sight of one of nature’s most amazing natural wonders. Do read the story of a traveler to Bosnia and Herzegovina as she observes a death-defying dive from a bridge that has seen more than its fair share of history. https://intrepidtimes.com/2020/07/the-other-europe/.
Let me confess, weeks of staying in with COVID scare sometimes drops down that craving for the outside world. But this year's travel restrictions also meant, to be a part of virtual tours, these are no less than a magic carpet taking you places, with no fear of falling.
Guest Blogger Satarupa Datta is a world traveler who seeks unique cultures and traditions, that’s unheard and not much written about on her Travel Blog Travel Hand Made. She's a television writer with previous stints in reputed travel channels based out of Mumbai, India. She also have been developing scripts for Taiwan, Portugal, Mauritius, Uzbekistan, Cyprus and Egypt which aired in Travel XP 4k channel and love to do travel guides, features, roundup articles, food stories for publications and tourism boards. Visit Travel Hand Made and read her work on The Chubby Nomad.
7 ways to travel without moving an inch is a Travel from Home Guide with travel tips during a Pandemic when travels are limited. You can still discover the world without physic travel if you travel from home, travel through technology; travelling without moving an inch,#travelwithoutmoving #travel #travelfromhome #homeguide #traveltips #traveltipsduringapandemic #whentravelsarelimited #discovertheworld #withoutphysicaltravel #travelthroughtechnology #travellingwithoutmoving
Disclosure: Our site contains Affiliate Links. As an Amazon Associate we also earn from qualifying purchases. Clicking an Affiliate Link and purshasing something we recommend, won't cost you anything extra - it probably will save you some bucks. It will though give us a small comission which will help this site remaining a free resource for travellers to explore our world together.
Very helpful guide for us bitten hard by the travelbug!