The Wall Street Journal reported in 2003 that revenues from adventure tourism have skyrocketed, topping the adventure market with $245 million dollars.
But who usually embarks on adventure travel? While many studies say college-educated males in their 20s typically embark on hard adventures, baby boomers and seniors significantly impact the rise in the number of soft travellers.
However, adventure-seeking women have substantially contributed to the growth of the adventure travel industry. For example, divorcees aged 40 and 60 usually turn to adventure travel to celebrate a new life on their own.
In addition, adventure travel is physically and psychologically beneficial to women. Physical challenges like mountain climbing require both physical fitness and focus. It develops muscles and serves as an excellent mental workout.
Achieving difficult tasks also help build self-esteem for people going through a midlife crisis.
What is Adventure Tourism?
Adventure tourism started with Leo Le Bon who co-founded the world’s first adventure travel company, Mountain Tours, with other eight travel mates.
Le Bon and others made the first commercial journey to the Annapurna region of Nepal. Since then, the travel business has grown rapidly resulting in a plethora of travel companies that offer adventure vacations.
The way adventure travel is classified depends on the level of strenuousness of activities involved. The two categories of adventure travel are hard and soft adventures.
Hard adventures fall under extreme and mostly dangerous sporting activity. Examples of hard adventures are rock climbing, surfing, paragliding, and scuba diving in remote locations.
Soft adventures, on the other hand, are often educational or leisure activities that do not involve strenuous activity. Bird watching, religious pilgrimages and architectural tours are all soft adventures.
Whether you choose to go leisure biking and hiking or base jumping into an underground cave in Mexico, adventure travel typically involves a journey to far-flung areas, intermingling with various cultures, and doing a physical activity.
Your first task is to determine first how adventurous you would like to be. Sports-themed vacations are well-liked for athletes. Examples of these are baseball fantasy camps and NASCAR driving schools.
Safari tours are one example of popular soft adventures. This may involve driving and walking through the African plains and come into close contact with lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo.
Long-time popular tours include biking and hiking to the Seven Wonders of World, that include the pyramids of Egypt, cultural tours in Japan and Ethiopia, the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal in India.
Adventure Travel Groups for Women
Women have become avid participants in adventure tourism, now one of the fastest growing trends in the travel business. Here are some women’s travel groups and clubs that can create special adventure tours for free-spirited Indian women travellers.
- AdventureTrips.in
They offer trips and services tailored to the safety requirements of women travelers, including personally reviewed hotels, taxi booking with trusted partners taking all information of the driver, the taxi company and continuous touch personally with the drivers, choice of female tourist guides, personal guidance on city-specific do’s & don’ts – areas to be avoided, dress code, cultural behaviour for women as well as late night airport pick up & drop.
Started by internationally known travel writer, Sumitra Senapaty, this travel club organizes all-women trips the world over for women who want to travel, but do not like the idea of travelling alone. They even offer special tours for moms and kids.
They offer global trips for women, including some for solo women travellers to India. They tailor their tours around the different things women like to do, including shop and have fun. With them, girls can let their hair down, not worry about how they look or how good they are at something and relax.
- Wanderlust And Lipstick
A travel website started by Beth Whitman, author of “The Essential Guide for Women Traveling Solo” – the hip chick’s guide to travelling the world. The website is geared toward women looking for information on Solo and Independent travel as well as Group Travel all over the world, and provide the tools they need to set out on a dream journey.
- The Women’s Travel Club
If you plan on travelling abroad a lot, you might want to join one of the oldest and largest international travel clubs for discerning women and women’s organizations. They specialize in small groups, personalized service, and special attention to solos. They also organize spa weekends, European destinations and Exotic locales on all 5 continents. The hotels they frequent are 4- and 5-star properties geared to the special interests of women, centrally located and with high service standards.
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