The Quiet Art of Slow Travel
Why seeing less, more deeply, consistently beats the ten-countries-in-ten-days approach.
Mei Tanaka
Content Editor
There is a version of travel that is essentially competitive: counting countries, filling days, collecting photographs of places you barely stopped in. It photographs well and feels hollow a week later.
The economics of staying put
Slow travel is often cheaper. Weekly apartment rates beat nightly hotel rates, you cook some meals yourself, and you stop paying for intercity transport every second day. What you spend instead is time, which is the whole point.
Four nights is the threshold
Two nights somewhere means you unpack, sleep twice and leave. Four nights means you find a favourite café, get recognised by a shopkeeper, and have a day where nothing is scheduled. That is usually the day people remember.
Trade three cities for one region
A week in one region — Puglia rather than Italy, the Sacred Valley rather than Peru — lets you follow a thread rather than tick a list. You will come home having learned something rather than having seen something.
The best trips are not the ones with the most days, but the ones with the fewest goodbyes.
How to actually do it
Book one base for the majority of the trip. Take one long day trip, and otherwise keep the radius small. Eat where you can walk. And leave at least one day completely unplanned — the schedule should have room for the trip to surprise you.
Written by
Mei Tanaka
Content Editor
Writes the guides, edits the itineraries and photographs most of the Asia content.
