Eco-Path Adventures, a safari operator in Kenya, has its own take on the safari experience. Brigit Murugi, the founder and director of Eco-Path Adventures, wants to tweak the standard industry model just a bit with its own style of travel, which she calls Slow Travel.
In terms of travel to Kenya, Slow Travel is a revisioning of the safari experience that takes the concept of sustainable tourism one step farther in its historical progression. It’s the next logical, inevitable step of the present path of sustainable tourism, according to Brigit Murugi.
When I met Brigit at the Magical Kenya Travel Expo last October, she told me that the objectives of sustainable travel can only be truly fulfilled through the principles of Slow Travel.
Over the last two decades, the principles of sustainable tourism have been embraced by a widening circle of travelers and travel industry professionals, who share a developing set of best practices to achieve their common goal.
At its core, sustainable tourism is a commitment to care for the environment, including its wildlife and its people, making sure that you bring more benefit than harm by your presence, that you help to maintain and develop the environment to help ensure that tourism benefits both present and future generations. Brigit Murugi has a point. Slow Travel does seem to be a next step in the effort to try to reach true sustainability, beyond buying some carbon credits.
Ms. Murugi worked as a travel consultant, then had an apprenticeship working with another safari operator before taking the leap to start her own safari operation based on her vision of the Kenya travel experience, and on the needs she felt were not being adequately addressed in the marketplace.
“What we promote is Slow Travel,” she said, “whereby you don’t have to go through a rushed safari. You go visit a destination, get to interact with the people there, get to have more time to engage, and also get to understand their way of living, how they do things, how they have their daily operations, and all that. As opposed to having a rushed safari, whereby you are rushing from one destination to another. So, we want to change it, and bring it to a way whereby you don’t have to visit Kenya within seven days. Just come, get to one destination, get to immerse yourself in that destination, and get to learn more.”
The Eco-Path Adventures website elaborates further: “At Eco-Path Adventures, travel is not escape-it’s a return. A return to wonder, to connection, to the quiet truth that the world is richer when we slow down enough to feel it. We believe a journey should do more than move you across a map. It should move you within.”
The Origin of the Slow Movement
What is now a vast, amorphous Slow Movement was kicked off as a reaction to Fast Food and the whole culture it represents.
In 1986 McDonald’s Corp. planned to put a fast food restaurant in Rome, only a few steps from the Barcaccia Fountain in Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the beloved landmark, the Spanish Steps.
The idea of a McDonald’s fast food joint at such an iconic landmark of Rome set off a storm of outrage from some Italians, who thought it was a vulgar intrusion of American cultural imperialism, likely to help erode Italian culinary traditions.
Hundreds of people showed up to protest the opening in 1986, including Carlo Petrini, a journalist and food advocate, who protested the “culturally homogenizing nature of fast food” and served pasta in the plaza to provide an anti-environment to McDonald’s.
Though the protests were not huge, they were theatrical and symbolic and caught the attention of international media. The protests did not stop the building of the McDonald’s, which still occupies that space today. But they did lead to the formation that year by Carlo Petrini of an international Slow Food movement, as a counter to the spread of fast food culture.
The Slow Food movement championed locally sourced foods, traditional gastronomy and food production. It opposed overproduction and food waste. It promoted local small businesses and sustainable foods. It encouraged a slowed down lifestyle in which one lives deliberately, savoring each moment. It rebels against the “faster is better” mindset.
It grew into a philosophy that preferred quality over quantity, fully engaging in the present moment, and fostering connections with people and the environment. It encourages a more intentional approach to daily activities, promoting sustainable practices and mindfulness.
Ironically, the Slow Food Movement may have spread more rapidly than the fast food movement itself had originally. The ideas quickly took off and spread around the world, with obvious applications to nearly every aspect of life. There is now slow almost everything: Slow Money, Slow Parenting, Slow Living, Slow Thinking, Slow Art, Slow Education, Slow Marketing, Slow Fashion, Slow Cinema, even Slow Video Games. Travel seems like the most perfect pairing of all to me.
In Carl Honoré’s 2004 book, In Praise of Slow, he described the slow movement as: “a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting.”
Slow Travel
The whole idea fits in perfectly with travel, with current trends in the marketplace and with the principles of sustainable tourism. As yet, we are not seeing a lot of references to the term “Slow Travel,” but it does have a historical basis.
“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed,” said Gandhi.
Though the phrase Slow Travel hasn’t gained much visibility in the industry, I suspect it will. There seems to be a timely and natural connection between the Slow Movement and trends in the travel industry towards preferences for exactly these values: immersion, spending more time and more focus on a single destination instead of always rushing from one to another, being in a rush to get to somewhere else. Instead it’s getting to know the people, interacting with them, contributing to care of the environment and local cultures.
“Our aim is to slow travel down,” said Brigit Murugi, “to craft experiences that allow you to breathe, immerse, and truly connect. We invite travelers to see Kenya not just as a destination, but as a living, breathing land -one that deserves to be cherished, protected, and passed on to future generations.”
For me as for many others I am sure, I’m kind of done with fast food, and fast travel too.
