At home in the New York City suburbs, Oscar Sandoval has lots of friends and an active social life. But when it’s time for holidays, he prefers to keep it quiet. Like, literally.
Sandoval began practicing Zen Buddhism a few years back, and has been on silent retreats to Buddhist monasteries around San Francisco and elsewhere. He’d stroll, sit, do some gardening and generally contemplate life for a week. More recently, he’s done solo backpacking trips across Spain.
“The internal experience varies from times of very little thinking to periods of many thoughts or songs playing in my head,” he says. “The utter peace and stillness is impossible to put into words.”
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.
From serene nature retreats to silent walking, the quest for quiet has become one of modern travel’s latest trends. Conde Nast Traveller said last month 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 holiday. It can be a shift towards introspection; a deeper connection with where we are both literally and figuratively.
“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.