KIM COOK
Associated Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At home in the New York City suburbs, Oscar Sandoval has lots of friends and an active social life. But when it\u2019s time for vacation, he prefers to keep it quiet. Like, literally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sandoval began practicing Zen Buddhism a few years back, and has been on silent retreats to Buddhist monasteries around San Francisco and elsewhere. He\u2019d stroll, sit, do some gardening and generally contemplate life for a week. More recently, he\u2019s done solo backpacking trips across Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe internal experience varies from times of very little thinking to periods of many thoughts or songs playing in my head,\u201d he says. \u201cThe utter peace and stillness is impossible to put into words.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Travel journalist Chloe Berge bemoaned the buzzing interruption of a drone while she was hiking the Faroe Islands\u2019 remote coastline during the pandemic. \u201cThe world is getting louder, and it\u2019s increasingly harder to escape the noise, even in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s worth a try, say the travelers who are seeking relief in silence. Or as close as they can get to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From serene nature retreats to silent walking, the quest for quietude has become one of modern travel\u2019s latest trends. Conde Nast Traveler said last month it was \u201cthe travel trend we\u2019re most obsessed with this year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For many, quiet travel goes beyond escaping the cacophony of everyday life while on vacation. It can be a shift toward introspection; a deeper connection with where we are both literally and figuratively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might even feel healthier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry in late 2022, for instance, mindfulness meditation worked as well as a standard drug for treating anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTransformative travel\u2019s a trend we\u2019re tracking for growth,\u201d says Alex Hawkins, editor at the trend forecaster and consultancy The Future Laboratory. \u201cIt taps into consumers\u2019 desire for self-reflective tourism experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cwellness tourism industry,\u201d he says, includes \u201cdemand for hyper-personal holidays and health-driven stays.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PEACEFUL PAMPERING<\/strong> BookRetreats, which urges clients to \u201cUnplug. De-stress. Recharge,\u201d offers silent meditation retreats in Bali, Portugal, Mexico and the Netherlands, and closer to home in North Carolina, Quebec and California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finland\u2019s Utula Nature offers a silent stay amidst the pines on Lake Saimaa, about five hours from Helsinki.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SERENE STROLLING<\/strong> Gordon Hempton is an acoustic ecologist in Washington State also known as The Sound Tracker. He\u2019s spent several decades roaming rainforests, coastlines and deserts looking for interesting and often rare nature sounds \u2014 sounds you can\u2019t easily hear when there\u2019s a lot of human-made noise. \u201cI care very deeply about quiet,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He\u2019s a co-founder of Quiet Parks International, a non-profit created to raise awareness of the benefits for both people and wildlife of less noise. Ecuador\u2019s Zabalo River park was the first to receive quiet park designation \u2013 it\u2019s not technically \u201cquiet,\u201d of course: Howler monkeys, birds, insects and the thrum of the river provide a natural soundtrack. But the nearest concentration of human activity is a village of roughly 200 people, about 10 miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are even a couple of urban areas designated as quiet parks \u2013 one just outside the bustling metropolis of Taipei, Taiwan\u2019s capital. Another is in Hampstead Heath, about 30 miles from central London. The grassy, 800-acre park inspired C.S. Lewis\u2019 \u201cThe Chronicles of Narnia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quiet Parks International offers experiences like forest bathing, where you open your senses to the meditative and relaxing elements of a walk in the woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For those who can\u2019t get out to nature, the Quiet Parks website has recordings of wildlife and weather in the rainforest; morning in the West Texas desert; and sounds of day and nightfall in northern Alaska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LOW-KEY LOST<\/strong> You\u2019re given pre-trip prep advice and navigation instruction, and then, at trip time, all the transfers, gear and mapped-out checkpoints you\u2019ll need. Your progress is monitored by a specialist in the chosen environment and by a local guiding support team. You can bail out at any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve sent clients to Iceland and Alaska,\u201d says Black Tomato\u2019s co-founder Tom Marchant. \u201cWe sent one solo traveler to Mongolia.\u201d A woman trekked on her own across Morocco\u2019s Atlas Mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marchant says there\u2019s the challenge of managing the environment, but \u201cit\u2019s also a time to truly disconnect from daily life in an entirely new way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KIM COOKAssociated Press At home in the New York City suburbs, Oscar Sandoval has lots of friends and an active social life. But when it\u2019s time for vacation, he prefers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2115,2122,2119,2113,2114,2117,2120,2112,2121,2116,2123,2118],"class_list":["post-3863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyles","tag-alex-hawkins","tag-black-tomato","tag-bookretreats","tag-chloe-berge","tag-conde-nast","tag-dark-retreats","tag-gordon-hempton","tag-oscar-sandoval","tag-quiet-parks-international","tag-the-future-laboratory","tag-tom-marchant","tag-ultula-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3863"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3871,"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions\/3871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimcookhome.com\/kchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The company Dark Retreats Oregon offers a five-day \u201cDark Retreat\u201d in Tidewater, Oregon, as \u201ca great space for self-care\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ditching the phone, zipping your lip, and putting on your comfy hikers; that\u2019s the silent walking trend that\u2019s found thousands of friends on TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Black Tomato\u2019s got an interesting proposition for you. The avant-garde travel company offers a trip they call Get Lost. You fill out an extensive questionnaire on what you\u2019re expecting from your escape, but you\u2019ll have no idea where you\u2019re going till they get you there. Environment options are Polar, Desert, Coastal, Jungle or Mountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n