DrinkFromLife
SARA'S TRAVELS
Sara and her slow, conscious and off-the-beaten-path travels. In love with India, she takes a pause for reflection in Morocco, a choice that leads her to open a travel agency to discover this beautiful country. DrinkFromLife is the blog where he tells us about his adventures, experiences and his life that he drinks like a precious nectar.
Welcome to Easy Travel Hosting! Could you tell us about your slow way of traveling and how you choose your routes?
Hello, thank you for the invitation and congratulations on your green mission. 🙂
I have been traveling since I was a child, I started traveling around Italy with my family (my parents were very young and took me everywhere), and then continued with the scouts of my city. We received a real environmental education, we used eco-sustainable products (we are talking about 30 years ago), we moved mainly on foot or, for long distances, by public transport. We had the essentials in our backpack and we always cleaned the places we passed, before and after.
Then I started traveling abroad, in Europe, but despite a lot of enthusiasm and some nice photos, I didn't have much left when I returned. I wanted to travel intensely, to return changed, with new eyes, a more open mind. So I started organizing myself to be able to do it.
I worked for a while, put some money aside and left for long months in India. Even with intervals of a month or two in Austria, Germany, seizing the opportunities that arose. This slow mode allowed me to come into contact with aspects that, passing fleetingly through a place, I would have ignored. To build lasting relationships. Coming home always a little changed. On the one hand enriched, on the other lighter than many useless superstructures I had.
Increasingly aware of the thread of universal humanity that connects different peoples. I travel mainly to countries towards which I feel a strong pull. I am usually attracted to places where colors and differences stand out, I feel a spirituality that permeates everything and everything, for better or worse, appears as it is, without filters.
It can be strong, at times destabilizing, but I prefer it to glossy realities.
You have a job that has to do with travel, which began in a perhaps unexpected and certainly exciting way. Could you tell us about it?
I carry out various activities, which are interconnected. Thanks to my background, I have been in the world of travel for a very long time. Furthermore, in 2013, I switched to a professional blog and since then I have collaborated with various entities, such as tourism bodies, structures, associations, brands. Always within the context of conscious travel that I love to spread.
In recent years I have received several proposals regarding travel organisation, especially to Morocco, but the pandemic has put a stop to everything. Then, through a series of unexpected and particular coincidences, I met Mohamed who invited me to collaborate in his project Sahara View Tours.
We immediately shared the same vision and philosophy of life and it was natural to connect our respective projects. And propose experiences in his land, with his knowledge of the area and my multifaceted experience as a traveler.
During the pandemic I trained as a certified travel designer, an extra step. We want to let people know the heart of a land we love deeply. To give those who choose us an immersive experience and return home with a baggage full of wonder and knowledge, loving the differences.
India is a country that you have visited extensively over time. What are your favorite destinations and why?
India is a great love, which I have explored for years. A lifetime is not enough to know it, because it is immense and has such profound nuances. It also evolves quickly.
From the north I loved Dharamsala, in Himachal Pradesh. In McLeod Ganji, in particular, lives a large Tibetan community in exile, which gathers around the Dalai Lama. I studied yoga in Rishikesh and it's really lovely, but it's also becoming a very commercial place. It's not their fault.
There the waters of the Ganges are crystal clear, there is an international community, precisely because of yoga. I had a very good time in Rajasthan, in Pushkar, which I consider an Indian home. Thanks to a small, and unexpected, community of Italian travelers I fit in very well (it also happened to me in Goa, with other Italians). These are people who were among the first Italians, at the time, to arrive in India and have returned over the years, also maintaining their initial friendships.
Finding myself with such welcoming people, without ulterior motives, who guided me through the Indian fabric, was fantastic. I remember when we had lunch, all on the floor, at the house of their friend, a historian, a Brahmin. Together with his wife he prepared traditional food from the area for us. Or when we went to Aloo Baba, a holy man who only eats potatoes.
But I also loved Bombay, for what little I could see, light and dark together. Secret Goa, far from beach parties, Tiruvannamalai, an important spiritual center in Tamil Nadu. Hampi with its rolling stones, in Karnataka. The green Kerala where I rode on my scooter among the tea plantations, passing small villages, images of the Archangel Michael, beautiful flowers. In Jaisalmer, in the Thar Desert, incredible things happened. I couldn't choose. Varanasi, on the other hand, was really tough for me and my travel companions, but I would like to go back to see it again with new eyes.
Tell us about your homeland, what do you love, what is difficult for you and what do you miss when you travel?
Of my Puglia, particularly in Salento, I love its roots, the crystalline sea, the hospitality, the ancient traditions that blend into modern times, the art, the dolmens and menhirs scattered with skill throughout the territory, the genuine food.
I miss the wild green though. At times I felt suffocated and I don't fit into a certain mentality. Furthermore, if you don't have a job with a fixed salary, and which falls within a status, many cannot place you. And they label you as a person who doesn't work, what a lazy person, but I think it's an Italian issue rather than an Apulian one.
Instead, I chased a permanent job for years and never managed to get it, so I had to do my best. 🙂
What hurt me served as a push to move, do different things, also approach the world of meditation (which I have been practicing and sharing since 2007) to travel not only outside, but above all inside and transform myself.
My motto is: Be the change you want to see in the world, I don't know if I always succeed, but I try hard every day.
When I travel I miss the comforts of home, my loved ones, but it's a small price to pay. I miss the local coffee (the people of Salento will understand me, we're obsessed) but sometimes I bring it with me and share it with those who are with me, to encourage conviviality.
However, I need to deal with large natural spaces and different cultures, I am happy with the experiences I have had.
As you know, Easy Travel Hosting uses renewable and eco-sustainable energy to power its servers. Furthermore, a tree is planted for each new hosting, actively helping reforestation and the absorption of CO2. What do you think of this project and in general, do you think it is important to seek a more sustainable lifestyle?
For this reason I respect you very much and I hope that more and more organizations will move seriously in this direction. Even the gesture of planting a tree is very powerful and concrete.
For me it is very important, luckily I was already made aware of it, even as a child, in my context and in the scout group I attended. Furthermore, by practicing meditation, I naturally became a vegetarian. I eliminated cow's milk years ago and try to use mainly local and sustainable products.
I go around with my water bottle, drink tap water or refill glass bottles in the appropriate water houses. I use the cup and the washable pads, I have the cloth bags in my bag. I don't spend on clothes that then last a season.
It's simply a matter of taking a few steps back, our grandparents ate very little meat and lived more in harmony with nature, they didn't waste anything. I speak about myself in first person only to give some ideas, and because I only share from direct experience, but everyone can build their own way, their own sustainable lifestyle that is always evolving towards the Common Good.
It takes patience and determination, as with everything in life. I thank you for your mission and openness. Thank you with all my heart.
Easy Travel Hosting Thank you so much Sara for taking part in our interview.
If you want to find out more, you can follow her on her website by clicking here.
And on social media too!
Easy Travel Hosting it is 100% ecological Hosting tailor-made for travelers by travellers.
Do you want to tell us your story? Contact us HERE.