From serene nature retreats to silent walking, the quest for quietude has become one of modern travel’s latest trends. Condé Nast Traveler said recently it was “the travel trend we’re most obsessed with this year.” For many, quiet travel goes beyond escaping the cacophony of everyday life while on vacation. It can be a shift toward introspection; a deeper connection with where we are both literally and figuratively.
Travel journalist Chloe Berge bemoaned the buzzing interruption of a drone while she was hiking the Faroe Islands’ remote coastline during the pandemic. “The world is getting louder, and it’s increasingly harder to escape the noise, even in nature.”
But it’s worth a try, say the travellers who are seeking relief in silence. Or as close as they can get to it. You might even feel healthier.
In a study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry in late 2022, for instance, mindfulness meditation worked as well as a standard drug for treating anxiety.
“Transformative travel’s a trend we’re tracking for growth,” says Alex Hawkins, editor at the trend forecaster and consultancy The Future Laboratory. “It taps into consumers’ desire for self-reflective tourism experiences.”
The “wellness tourism industry,” he says, includes “demand for hyper-personal holidays and health-driven stays.”
Peaceful pampering
The company Dark Retreats Oregon offers a five-day “Dark Retreat” in Tidewater, Oregon, as “a great space for self-care” through darkness, digital detox, and a healthy diet. Participants can keep the lights off as much as they want during their stay, and can also decide how much they talk to others.
BookRetreats, which urges clients to “Unplug. De-stress. Recharge,” offers silent meditation retreats in Bali, Portugal, Mexico, and the Netherlands, and closer to home in Quebec, North Carolina, and California.
Finland’s Utula Nature offers a silent stay amidst the pines on Lake Saimaa, about five hours from Helsinki.
Serene strolling
Ditching the phone, zipping your lip, and putting on your comfy hikers – that’s the silent walking trend that’s found thousands of friends on TikTok.
Gordon Hempton is an acoustic ecologist also known as The Sound Tracker. He’s spent several decades roaming rainforests, coastlines and deserts looking for interesting and often rare nature sounds – sounds you can’t easily hear when there’s a lot of human-made noise. “I care very deeply about quiet,” he says.
He’s a co-founder of Quiet Parks International, a non-profit created to raise awareness of the benefits for both people and wildlife of less noise. Ecuador’s Zabalo River park was the first to receive quiet park designation – it’s not technically “quiet,” of course: Howler monkeys, birds, insects, and the thrum of the river provide a natural soundtrack. But the nearest concentration of human activity is a village of roughly 200 people, about 16 km away.
There are even a couple of urban areas designated as quiet parks – one just outside the bustling metropolis of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. Another is in Hampstead Heath, about 50 km from central London. The grassy, 320-hectare park inspired C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Quiet Parks International offers experiences like forest bathing, where you open your senses to the meditative and relaxing elements of a walk in the woods.
For those who can’t get out to nature, the Quiet Parks website has recordings of wildlife and weather in the rainforest; morning in the West Texas desert; and sounds of day and nightfall in northern Alaska.
Low-key lost
Black Tomato’s got an interesting proposition. The avant-garde travel company offers a trip they call ‘Get Lost.’ Clients fill out an extensive questionnaire on what they’re expecting from the escape but have no idea where they’ll be going until they get there. Environment options are Polar, Desert, Coastal, Jungle or Mountain.
Participants are given pre-trip prep advice and navigation instruction, and then, at trip time, all the transfers, gear and mapped-out checkpoints required. Progress is monitored by a specialist in the chosen environment and by a local guiding support team. Guests can bail out at any time.
“We’ve sent clients to Iceland and Alaska,” says Black Tomato’s co-founder Tom Marchant. “We sent one solo traveller to Mongolia.” A woman trekked on her own across Morocco’s Atlas Mountains.
Marchant says there’s the challenge of managing the environment, but “it’s also a time to truly disconnect from daily life in an entirely new way.”