Spice Trail. Image credit: Author
‘
Cultural experiences don’t have to be staged activities in sanitised environments. And you can go on a great city tour and come back without having done any sightseeing.
Our work has required us to toil against some of these stereotypes. Cultural experiences don’t have to be staged activities in sanitised environments. Tours can be designed to be both insightful and enjoyable at the same time. And you can go on a great city tour and come back without having done any sightseeing. Storytrails is not a walking tours company, although we walk on many of our trails. Our trails are not heritage tours although we talk about our heritage on some of them. And these are definitely not packaged as sight-seeing tours although there is so much to see in so many of them. As the name suggests, these are story-based experiences. Our tours are not about
‘
hidden places or lesser known attractions. Instead they are all about uncovering the not so visible stories behind ordinary everyday sights. Big promises and lofty ideals, you might think. But these are expectations we have met consistently over the last nine years. And the credit should probably go to the fact that none of us in Storytrails have a travel industry background. So we happily went around breaking myths that have had a stranglehold over the travel industry for far too long. There are many, and I have picked a few to talk about here:
June 2016 | CITY OBSERVER
61