Much as I love to travel, a part of me is always feeling guilty about the footprints left by us travellers. Let’s admit it, travel is hardly anything environment friendly. The least we can do is to try to minimize our footprints, or if possible, go Carbon Neutral.
It would be nice to scribble some tips and then forget it, but it is much better to say what I am trying to do myself. Here are a few things I have been consciously trying to do, things that have happened by themselves and things that I hope to do someday.
* Not to drive. I have cut down on driving trips drastically. Three years back, nearly every trip I made was in my car. Now the passion of driving has weathered down; and I am also consciously cutting down on my driving. Even within the town, I don’t take the car out unless I have absolutely no choice. I even use a bicycle now for short rides around home, which were done with a car earlier. And if I remember correctly, I haven’t made a driving trip since last August.
* Not to Fly. Flying is one of the least fuel efficient ways to travel. From the usual habit of flying everywhere(when I travel to North), I have started taking trains. It it not entirely successful, the basic reason being that train journeys require lot of planning in advance. And my return journeys are usually open, which makes things more difficult. When I travelled to Rajasthan this February, I managed to take the train to Delhi. But when I was ready to return, I could not find seats in any trains, forcing me to fly back. But abstaining from flying is not entirely by choice. Since I have not been working 9 to 5 these days, I try to keep spending to minimum.
* Simple things – like behaving properly in environmentally sensitive regions is something I have been doing for a very long time now. Things like dispose garbage properly, take care of your consumption, avoid being noisy in the jungles or burning wood, etc. I once stopped consumption of tea(once part of my daily diet) and switched over to coffee(which is also destructive, but to a lesser degree), when I was disturbed by seeing sprawling tea estates in erstwhile thick jungles of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
* Some thing that I strongly hope to do in the next few years is to go Carbon Neutral. The strategy is simple – buy land and start growing trees there and do little else. A few people have been doing this already, and this is a project I am very keen to do once I have some extra money in hand. And then, as and when there is surplus money, expand the periphery of the forest. I am not sure when I can begin on it, but hopefully in less than 3-4 years from now. Ah, I can just imaging my private forest and going there birding every morning, makes me smile.. 🙂
* Another thing I hope to do, but don’t know when and how I can start – to volunteer in our National Parks and surrounding villages in projects aiding conservation. I nearly teamed up with folks at Eaglenest last year but had to drop out due to some constraints.
No matter how much time I have been spending writing on India Travel Blog, I have always had a lot pending. The stories on Himachal that I have been writing now will be complete in a week or two. Had I delayed any further, it would have been a year since I made the trip.
Anyway, once I am done with ‘Himachalogue’, coming up next will be another long series of posts on Rajasthan, covering Jaipur, Shekhawati, Pushkar, Jaisalmer and Jodhpur.
Camel and camel drivers of Jaisalmer
After that will be a story on a few places in Tamil Nadu, which includes gigantic temples of Madurai and Thanjavur, and enchanting Kanyakumari.
At Meenakshi Temple, Madurai
Together, they should keep me busy for a few months. I should set sail again sometime in June to the mountains of the North, and stories of it should follow after return. There is enough dough for the entire year already; keep dropping by. 🙂
Some low-cost airlines have now decided to levy service charges for booking tickets on the net. Low cost carriers have been getting innovative about making money in the last one or two years. Some airlines in the west have worked towards charging the passengers for second check-in baggage, and some are letting you reserve a seat for an extra fee. Now all the domestic airlines have learned to sell tickets for Rs.100 and then add some Rs.2400 in taxes on that; impressive indeed. Unfortunately, competition is high and the costs are also going up, which means these airlines are struggling even with all these new fees. In comes the genius, yours truly, to help these airlines identify more options to make passengers to pay up.
1. Lock the toilets. If anyone wants to use the loo, make them pay at least a $100 to let them in. They have no choice but to give in. Another option was to remove the loo and put some seats there, but it would be needed for emergencies.
2. Ask pregnant women to buy two tickets.
3. Disable the reclining backrests. If you need to push it back, pay up. Capable airlines can go one step ahead and program the backrests. The more you pay, the more it reclines. Pay a dollar to recline it by one degree, $10 to recline it by ten degrees and so on. If you hate the guy in the row behind you, you can make his life miserable by paying $90. If any one complains, give them a toothy air-hostess smile, absolutely free of cost as a goodwill measure and promotional. They can even attach a credit card reading machine to the seats.
4. Make the passengers carry their check-in baggage to the aircraft and load it into the luggage compartment. That saves the expenses of a few employees. Same goes with unloading.
5. This is for Air Deccans of the world who don’t provide a seat number, and make people run to catch a seat. If the aircraft windows could be slid open, they would have probably permitted towel reservations. I wonder why they can’t allot seat numbers to passengers, at least on humanitarian grounds. If that requires investing a few thousand dollars on software, they could do it manually. Neighbourhood private bus operator does it for us by keeping a printed layout sheet and marking manually on them, but the airlines must be too sophisticated for that. Okay, coming back to how they can make money, they can allot a seat for those who pay. And they can also provide right to board first for some more money(Just searched on the internet, some European airlines are already doing this!)
6. Food and water have been commercialized already. The next thing humans need for surviving is air. Aircrafts require compressed air supply. Just stop the supply at midair and ask for money from everyone.
7. Sell bus tickets for the buses that carry passengers from aircraft to terminal and vice versa. Don’t forget to charge extra for luggage.
Safety standards require that every passenger be given a seat. How sad is that? Without the regulations, they could have sold standing seats, with seats costing extra. I can assure that it works. Someone tried an April Fool joke about selling standing room, and they had lot of people falling in line!
Do you have any ideas for the budget airlines that are loosing money?