An
absolutely new idea of traveling came into my life in 2007. It was
international hospitality exchange networks (such as
couchsurfing.org and
hospitalityclub.org). First I
was only a host, people from all over the world came to my place in far away
kingdom called Far East telling amazing stories of their life and trips. It
completely has changed all my life.
I was
always into “eco” way of living, because all my relatives are biologists –
scientists, teachers. I used to think about the pollution of the Earth since I
was a child. Russian people mostly don’t really care about anything else, but
their today's satisfaction and entertainment. My heart was bleeding when I saw
even my friends, people who I knew for all my life, putting garbage to a heap
next to a beach, as “there was a garbage already”. I tried to reduce my own eco
trace. So, I was glad to find this new way of traveling.
There’s ecotourism, when you visit eco-places and enjoy the nature. But what if you
want to do regular sightseeing? Book a flight, book a hotel again? No, there’s
a way to do traveling in a responsible, sustainable way.
So… what
did I find out during my trips to China, Vietnam and The European Union?
“How to
travel with the minimal damage to the nature and maximal comfort to you”.
1. Using hospitality network you
decrease the amount of one-use things (toothbrushes, toothpastes, soaps etc).
You take your stuff (including linen or a sleeping bag) with you, so there’s an
economy of electricity as the hotel (hostel) doesn’t have to wash clothes and
clean your room every day.
2. You take part in everyday life; can
share ideas and experience, spread the idea of a green life around.
3. Mostly you cook at home for your
host or your host cooks for you, so you use less throwaway packs, eat local
food, eat “slow food”, not fast food.
4. Hitchhiking (BTW, hitchwiki.org helped a lot) is the way to completely
stop using planes, but it doesn’t suits everybody, so carpool would be
suitable for those ones who don’t want to wait for hours for the lift on
unlucky day. Sharing a car and fuel costs with the driver and another
passengers you decrease consumption of the gasoline! (I used this site for Germany http://www.mitfahrzentrale.de and it worked out excellent. Also there's another one for the whole world http://www.carpoolworld.com/)
5. Using bicycles inside of the cities
for sightseeing help to fight with air pollution. There are tons of free or not
very expensive bike tours in every European city and you can rent a bike very
cheap or even buy it in all Asian countries.
6. In the end you save a bunch of
money, which you can save it up for your next trip, or spend for saving pandas in
China or for
visiting amazing museums and galleries, enjoying a cultural heritage…
whatever…!
I believe that’s the future of traveling!
CouchSurfing grass party in Vladivostok, back to 2008.
