Photo. To get an unique adventure, start to find interesting places where you don`t end up with big groups of noisy tourists. © Travel Explorations.
Do you want to push the limits on your personal comfort zone by penetrate dense jungles, climb high mountains, approach wild animals, or get in touch with exotic tribes in remote areas?
Adventurous trips are those travels that change you, enchant you and ensure memories for a lifetime. It doesn’t mean you have to get an adrenalin kick. Some travellers go for the physical thrills and the opportunities that stretch a body's physical capabilities to the utmost degree. Other travellers would rather use their minds, eyes, hearing and cameras to enhance their experiences. If you're out for thrills, think carefully about the extent of adventure you'll really enjoy. Is just reaching a top of a mountain sufficient for calling it an unique adventure? It’s probably more for pushing its personal strengths and to see how far a person can reach.
So far I know there has been no agreement on a standard definition of adventure travel. Based on results from the survey of Definition of Adventure Travel: Conceptual Framework for Empirical Application from the Providers’ Perspective, it has been suggested a definition of adventure travel:
A trip or travel with the specific purpose of activity participation to explore a new experience, often involving perceived risk or controlled danger associated with personal challenges, in a natural environment or exotic outdoor setting (Heidi Sung, et al., 1997).
The study's results supported the hypothesis that the major components including activity, motivation, risk, performance, experience, and environment, should be used to define adventure travel. All six components are considered to be highly important in adventure travel. Some variation in terms of the level of importance is found, with activity at the highest level, and performance at the lowest level. For more information about this survey: Survey about Adventure Travel.
For experience travellers, nothing is more annoying than reading Lonely Planet and follow the tourist stream like a herd of cattle to covered places in the book. If everybody read Lonely Planet, they all will end up in the same place.
Tour operators organising tours to these places have mostly the same programme for tourists. It’s like a big industry producing high volume of standard products. It’s doesn’t make you feel that it was an unique adventure.
The big paradox for places notified by UNESCO, for example Machu Picchu, is that they get very attractive for travellers, and instead of being better preserved, they are more exposed to damage.
The 31 Properties which the World Heritage Committee has decided to include on the List of World Heritage in Danger in accordance with Article 11 (4) of the Convention. Some sites are damaged by natural erosion as they become exposed to air, rain, earthquakes, also plundering is a problem, but many sites are exposed to mass tourism and that`s probably the biggest problem now a days.
Too much tourists destroy our most attractive sites around the world. For example Grand Canyon in USA offer great opportunities for an unique adventure. How would you like to walking in big groups with people singing and shouting like howling dogs? How would to like to observe and hear helicopters in Grand Canyon?
The cultural heritage of the Kathmandu Valley is illustrated by seven groups of monuments and buildings which display the full range of historic and artistic achievements for which the Kathmandu Valley is world famous. The seven include the Durbar Squares of Hanuman Dhoka (Kathmandu), Patan and Bhaktapur, the Buddhist stupas of Swayambhu and Bauddhanath, and the Hindu temples of Pashupati and Changu Narayan. Threats to this site are according to UNESCO: The exceptional architectural design of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur is gradually disappearing due to uncontrolled urban development.
Many the 830 selected sites on UNESCO-list, are threaten in big trouble, as for example Machu Picchu in Peru, Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, Venice in Italy, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Taj Mahal in India, Grand Canyon in USA, Yellowstone National Park in USA, and the Lascaux Caves in France. Due to internet mass tourism has increased substantially. Information about destinations is very available and it’s easy to book tours. For eager travellers, they risk to be stamp down in these places by other tourists. It’s like herring in a barrel. And what’s the unique adventure then?
How to define an unique travel adventure?
It’s no common way to define the words Adventure Travel, but anyway I would like to suggest some key factors which I think are important for the meaning:
- Finding a place where few have been before
- Getting new information and angels about the place, history, mystery or life
- Sharing good experience with good friends
- Building friendship with people who meet on the way who have very different lifestyle and cultural background than yourself
- Being invited by locals to explore their secret places and customs
- Experiencieng something that few or none has done before
- Experiencing something unexpected
Does these factors give substance to an unique travel adventure? What`s the selling points for the adventures tour operators are promoting? The most important thing travellers look for is Adventure. Of course what is called an unique travel adventure is subjective.
It seems to me that many tour operators forget that when they are promoting their tours and destinations. In the future I think that travellers will be more conscious about choosing tour operators who promote opportunities for great adventures, and not tour operators who emphasise travel as a product such as destinations, tour programmes and travel services. There is a quite big difference between airlines selling flights and tour operators promoting adventure travel.
This article continues in Part 2: Choose tour operators who give you an unique travel adventure - Part 2 of 2!
Stein Morten Lund, 25 September 2006
Additional information
Source for the survey about Adventure Travel:
Heidi H. Sung, Alastair M. Morrison and Joseph T. O’Leary
Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research
APJTR is an official publication of the Asia Pacific Tourism Association
Our global travel guide, Travel Explorations, become establish in 2000 to guide people with passion for travelling towards opportunities for unique travel adventures.
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