12 unusual types of tourism
What is caravanning and jailoo tourism? Where can you become a farmer for a week or a movie star for an hour? How can you fly free to Mars. Skyskaner tells about the adventures and unusual types of travel, infinitely far from packet tourism. Choose what is closer to you, or offer your options.
- Rural tourism
Rural tourism returns to the basics. Instead of an alarm clock – cocks, instead of a coffee machine in the office – a cow to be milked, and instead of rubber vegetables from the supermarket – fresh food straight from the garden. You can arrange a rural tour yourself, find a local guide or trust in agencies that specialize in agritourism. Some companies focus on individual regions, others organize adventures for every taste in all corners of the world.
In agriturismo.net they know everything about Tuscan farms for riding enthusiasts, and the American Agrotours is literally ready for everything: from “Take me to places where there are no skyscrapers and cars, I will disconnect the phone and look after the flowers” meat farms in Australia are arranged.” The slogan of the Indian Agri Tourism says: “To change, you need to go back to the roots.” And indeed, India is perhaps the best country in the world for those who want to return to the very roots. And in Israel, the Ministry of Agriculture is engaged in the development of agro-tourism, its website contains 16 ideas of adventure – from fishing to beekeeping.
- Jailoo tourism
From Kyrgyz “jailoo” is translated as “mountain pasture”. Jailoo-tourists travel to untouched corners of the planet – the mountains and steppes of Asia, the forests of Siberia and North America, the Amazon jungle and reserves of Africa – to forget for a while about the benefits of civilization. You can start from the homeland of this type of tourism – Kyrgyzstan, but do not choose extreme routes if you do not have experience hiking in the mountains. It is safer to find a local guide who takes you to the high mountain pastures between the Issyk-Kul and Son-Kul lakes on the right path. The best time to travel is from May to September, although warm clothes are useful there even in summer.
Jailoo-tourism can be combined with ethnic – stay overnight in a shepherd’s yurt in the Mongolian steppe, settle in a reed hut in a deaf Indonesian village, or stay with a good-natured tribe Dramrayg in northern Tanzania. The “family adopted” traveler lives the daily life of the indigenous population, follows local traditions and rituals and adopts skills such as grazing cattle, making pottery, or making fire not from a cigarette lighter.
- Kinotourism
The film tourists want to be the characters of their favorite movie for a while, and there are two ways. You can follow in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes in the UK or rent a red Chevrolet Impala and ride in yellow glasses along the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas heroes. And you can be right in the scenery of your favorite movie. For example, explore every corner of Tolkien’s Middle-earth in New Zealand, see the alien landscapes of Star Wars in the Tunisian Tatavin, Matmata and Towazar. And Woody Allen fans can arrange a whole “staircase tour” in Europe and sit first on the very staircase at the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, where the hero of “Midnight in Paris” was transferred in the 1920s, and then on the Spanish Steps from “Roman Adventures”.
- Festival tourism
Music lovers practice another kind of tourism – festival. And in Europe for one vacation, you can visit several concerts at once. Many festivals go on for three days, so campgrounds and caravan sites are near the stage. Among the cult musical events are the Spanish Primavera (end of May – early June), the British Glastonbury (end of June) and the Hungarian Sziget in August. You can choose a festival like on the Festicket website.
To some extent, festival tourism includes trips to grand events like the Brazilian or Venetian carnivals, encerro in Pamplona, Oktoberfest or the Edinburgh festival Fringe.
- Gastronomic tourism
Cooking courses and ethnic restaurants are everywhere, but it is more interesting to get acquainted with the recipes of national cuisines in their homeland. Perhaps the point here is in the setting and perception, but whatever one may say, the masaman curry is tastier in Krabi and the khinkali in Kazbegi. Yes, and for the recipe for the right pizza, you should go to the south of Italy and try to ask the owners of family restaurants to arrange a master class (but you can’t do without basic Italian in this case).
Traveling in France is definitely worth diversifying with acquaintance with cheeses and wines. The “cheese” regions are considered the birthplace of Camembert Normandy and Burgundy, where Napoleon’s favorite cheese was created – the epuas. The perfect pair of soft aromatic cheeses will be wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne. And to learn to understand tea, go to the Chinese province of Fujian, famous for its oolongs and red teas, the home of Puer Yunnan or trekking in Sichuan with its green and yellow teas.
- Ecological tourism
Adherents of this type of tourism are spiritually enriched by being alone with nature. As a rule, eco-tourists serve as a hut in a national reserve, and wild animals serve as neighbors. The goal is to contemplate from a safe distance and do no harm. There is even an international community of ecological tourists who want to benefit the environment during their holidays.
However, ecotourism can be very extreme. Take, for example, the so-called “shark tours”, when you are immersed in a special cage in the sea, where predators already carnivorously grin at all three rows of teeth – entertainment is not for the faint-hearted!
- Caravaning
Caravans are called motor homes, and it is very convenient to be a homebody and a traveler at the same time. This way of organizing life came up with American immigrants in the 1930s. Moving from place to place, they carried with them folding furniture and household utensils in covered wagons. Gradually, special campsites for caravaners began to appear – such as small communes. And still in the USA and Europe there are a lot of those who are not ready to exchange the trailer for an ordinary apartment or house.
If you are easy going and have always dreamed of embarking on a car trip without stopping in hotels, this is what you need. This type of tourism is also good because it gives complete independence from the timetable of traffic, and with it you can take everything you need, including bicycles, surfboards or downhill skiing.
- Spiritual tourism
The purpose of spiritual tourism is not so much to change the situation as to change oneself. This is an ascetic kind of travel for those who want to find inner harmony and bring thoughts in order. Such tourists travel to countries with a mild climate – usually to India, Thailand or Indonesia – to practice yoga and spiritual practices in a peaceful atmosphere.
- Industrial tourism
Who in childhood did not climb into semi-burnt houses and empty construction sites? Urbex (from urban exploration), a type of tourism based on urban research, is called upon to resurrect those quivering feelings. Industrial tourists are digers who study the underground and underground utilities, roofers who walk on rooftops, and stalkers who penetrate abandoned objects, and not only industrial ones. For example, a stalker can go to the ghost town of Kadykchan in the Magadan region or to the prototype of Silent Hill – the town of Centreilia in Pennsylvania, where the underground fire has been burning for more than half a century.
Those who are interested in objects of religion that have lost their sacral significance also have their own tourist movement: postpalomniki find and explore forgotten temples. A separate subspecies of industrial tourism – nuclear. Atomic-era fans go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, to the abandoned Pripyat and slowly begin to penetrate into the Fukushima prefecture.
- Gloomy tourism
It is also called “dark”, “black” or dark tourism. Meaning – traveling to places associated with death, destruction, mysticism and tragedy. “Dark tourists” get impressions, walking through the cemeteries and battlefields, they are attracted by all the sinister and supernatural.
Among the attractions of dark tourism are the former death camp in Auschwitz, 60 km from Krakow, the French ghost town of Oradour-sur-Glane, destroyed during World War II, the place of mass executions of Choeng Ek and other Death Fields in Cambodia. In the US, trips to Alcatraz prison where Al Capone sat are popular. And in Romania, “dark tourists” roam the ruins of the Poenari fortress: historians consider it, and not Bran, the real castle of Dracula.
- Backpacker Tourism
The purpose of backpacking is the most economical journey. You can identify a backpacker from a distance along the backpack behind your back (and often also on your chest) and the Lonely Planet guide in your hands. Backpackers ride by car or by public transport, and spend the night in hostels, tents or each other – there are special services for this, like kouchsurfing. In developed countries, traditional time is set aside for such tourism – the gap year, the “drop out year” between graduation and the beginning of a career. But to become a backpacker is never too late: a backpack by the shoulders – and more!
- Space tourism
In contrast to the backpacking of traveling into space – the most expensive form of tourism, it is just like cosmic money to match the name. The world’s first space tourist Dennis Tito in 2001 paid $ 20 million for a flight to the ISS. Now state monopolies on space are in the past, private companies are building their space centers and spacecraft, and some are already selling tickets for future suborbital flights. Virgin offers 2.5 hours in space for $ 250,000, XCOR Aerospace – for $ 95,000.
Another interesting initiative is the Mars One project, whose members can go to Mars for free without a return ticket to establish the first Martian settlement. The first crew of four will fly to Mars as early as 2024, then flights will become regular – once every two years.
