Tourism: A contrarian view

 Tourism is all gimmick I feel. It's a FOMO type feeling that tour operators give to us. When we see big ads in newspapers about different tour packages and reviews of people (who had done tours with these tour agents), you feel that you should also go for those fancy destinations.

They(tour companies/agents) say travel makes you learn new culture, new food, you meet new people/friends. May be, may not be. Nobody gets a real good friend on tour...may be few exceptions. Most people eat same food as their home food during the tour except occasional local food eating. I doubt the kind of tourism most people do today, there is hardly any learning of new culture. Then, tour companies say - "You become a wiser person when you travel." This is one more myth that is marketed by travel companies. One can be a wise person even by sitting at home in long meditations on daily basis. It's not that you must travel to become a wise person. Our previous generation used to visit their own relatives during summer & Diwali vacations. And that was all they used to travel as a change of routine. No flights or no five star hotels and no promises of "mind blowing sight seeing". Still they did well as far as wisdom is concerned.

One may argue that at that time, facilities were not available.These hotels, roads, flights & overall tourism industry, all were not developed. Then, that means now all these flights, hotels & tourism are created.A need is created for masses and classes. And, so we all people must spend money to fullfill our this "need" which is created by the tourism industry. So, basically, tourism is a consumable item. Like how different gazettes, clothes and so many different items are thrown at us by these online marketing & selling companies, on similar lines, the tourism industry promote us tours. And, like all those items, we need to think twice that whether I really should spend lacs of money and buy a tour once or twice a year? Am I buying it because everyone goes to tour so I must go? All my friends & relatives enjoy tours, so I must also enjoy those tours?. (One may prefer & enjoy trekking/solo trip/ some other form of relaxation. That's a different way of tourism.)

Generally speaking, we tend to get tired of these so called "tours" done through travel companies. 7-10 days of travel, sightseeing and making ticks to all planned sightseeing. After coming back from tour, we feel depressed to join back to our work. On top of it, there is huge pending work in front of us. All these work makes us more tired within a week of working. And we start thinking, was that tour really worth??

May be we should do small 2-3 days trips to local places where we have very short travel time, no running around for sightseeing and genius relaxation with friends/relatives ( if you are staying with them). A simple twice a day walk around in those places will be refreshing for us. We can't even do that at our native place due to busy schedules.

So, dear friends , let's try some old generation style relaxation tours with our local nearby place, stay at friend's or relative's place. Have a long debate or chitchat with them. Let our children know their children in person & not only on insta or Facebook. Let's talk in person with them in stead of what's app. Let's be more human and less of consumer.