I’ll be honest: I’m not good at sitting with silence. According to my Spotify Wrapped, I amassed an impressive (worrying?) 75,000 minutes of music this year. That’s not including the podcasts I brush my teeth to or the audiobooks I regularly fall asleep to.
Do I have a problem? Quite possibly. But I’m not alone. More and more of us are living our lives to the tune of news podcasts and algorithmically curated Spotify playlists, and falling asleep to the soft glow of our laptop screens or the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry. Podcast streams have doubled in the last six years, while audiobook consumption is up 94%. Music streaming is also on the rise, with 1.1 billion of us expected to be subscribed to a music streaming service in 2028.
We live in a noisy world with diminishing space for a wandering mind. With so much content vying for our attention and providing a constant soundtrack to our always-on lives, opportunities to sit quietly with ourselves are rare. “People are becoming less accustomed to silence in our digital age”, says neuroscientist Anne-Sophie Fluri. “Noise can cause stress, especially when we don’t have control over it.” Indeed, studies have linked noise pollution to a range of health problems, including depression and cardiovascular disease.
In contrast, research suggests that spending time in silence has countless well-being benefits, helping us to sit more comfortably with our thoughts and feelings, better manage stress, and even boost creativity. One study in mice linked periods of silence with the development of new brain cells, while another found that two minutes of silence produced a more calming effect than relaxing music. According to Anne-Sophie, incorporating silence into our daily lives can “improve our communication with others, deepen our relationship with ourselves, and build resilience in the face of life’s challenges.”
In overstimulated times, silence is a hot commodity. The ‘silent walking’ trend that took TikTok by storm at the end of last year reflects a growing impulse to find new ways to escape the noise of our tech-fueled lives. In our travels, too, we’re increasingly looking to switch off and find refuge from the chaos for a little while. Hence the rise of silent travel: one of our top travel trends for 2024.
What is silent travel?
Encompassing everything from silent retreats to digital detox cabins to silent walking tours and even concerts, silent travel helps us disconnect to reconnect—to nature, to our true priorities, and to ourselves. It represents a more mindful form of travel, that doesn’t leave you needing a holiday to recover from your holiday.
This is a new trend with ancient roots. In its purest form, silent travel is associated with silent meditation retreats. These originated out of the Buddhist practice of Vipassana, which translates as “seeing things as they really are,” or insight. Vipassana retreats involve spending a period of time in ‘noble silence’, with most of the day taken up in meditation or reflection. They range from long weekends to 10-day experiences and are offered all over the world at various intensities.
As with other spiritual practices that have been adopted by the wellness sector, silent retreats also run the risk of appropriating the cultures they draw inspiration from. “Silent meditation retreats can teeter into cultural appropriation when Buddhist and Hindu practices such as Vipassana or mindfulness meditation are packaged as merely wellness tools, severing them from their spiritual and ethical roots,” says meditation and yoga practitioner Puravi Joshi. “Cherry-picking these practices in this way trivializes these deeply spiritual practices and risks commercialising them as trendy, one-size-fits-all approaches to what are historically rich and diverse cultural practices.”
So while they can bring enormous benefits, silent retreats are not an uncomplicated force for good. It’s worth doing your research, and making sure you know what you’re signing yourself up for before you go.
Are there other benefits of silent travel?
Silent travel isn’t just good for our wellbeing, but also for the planet, representing a more sustainable form of travel. “Natural quiet is an essential quality that both humans and wildlife need”, says Gordon Hempton, co-founder of Quiet Parks International. Quiet Parks is a non-profit on a mission to preserve quiet spaces for the benefit of all life. They campaign for a quieter world, through research, education and their Quiet Park certification scheme, and facilitate quiet travel experiences across the globe, from forest bathing and tea ceremonies to multi-day quiet retreats. As well as providing some revitalizing peace and quiet, quiet travel experiences also give you the peace of mind of knowing you’re investing your money in something worthwhile. “Dollars spent towards travel at quiet destinations helps to preserve those places, which have been shown to be some of the healthiest and ecologically stable on the planet”, says Gordon. “They use our carbon, produce our oxygen, and provide rare sanctions for threatened and endangered wildlife species.”
How can you experience silent travel?
There are plenty of places where you can test out whether silent travel is for you. In the UK, Gaia House holds meditation retreats throughout the year in the hills of South Devon, which are conducted in total silence (including non-verbal and written communication). Further afield, Cave of the Heart runs silent retreats in South Portugal, while Mandali, a boutique retreat centre in the Italian Alps, offers silent retreats in a beautiful setting. For a more intensive experience, you can travel to India to one of the many Vipassana meditation centres across the country offering 10-day residential courses. One of the largest of these is Dhamma Giri, located in Maharastra (a three-hour drive from Mumbai). Courses are run on a donation basis and involve an application process.
If (like me) the idea of spending a week alone with your thoughts sounds terrifying, fear not. There are many ways to incorporate silence into your travels. “Silence doesn’t necessarily mean a complete lack of auditory input”, says Anne-Sophie. “It’s really about tuning into the sounds around you, especially nature”. Your version of silent travel might be staying in a remote natural landscape, going on a silent walking tour, or staying in a quiet resort, like the Peace & Quiet hotel in Swedish Lapland, or the Silent Living guest houses in Portugal. It might simply mean spending three days without your phone.
For more adventurous silent-seekers, a growing range of travel providers combine mindful silence with outdoor activity. If you like the idea of a small-talk-free hike, you can go on a mindful walk with Silent Koli in Koli Nature Centre, Finland; try trekking and mindfulness in Nepal with Kilroy; or take a ‘SilentHike’ with MindTravel (who also offer silent concerts). For a quiet adrenaline rush, you can ‘get lost’ in a remote location with Black Tomato’s unique travel experience, or go off-grid in the Norwegian fjords with Offbeat Adventures, who provide responsible guided adventures that respect the natural environment.
So if you haven’t settled on a New Year’s resolution yet, maybe 2024 can be the year we decide to embrace silence. Whether that means trying your first silent meditation retreat, digital detoxing in a woodland cabin, or simply spending a bit less time plugged into your headphones, I hope this year brings you some peace.
The best silent travel retreats 2024
Gaia House, UK
Gaia House is a meditation retreat centre and charity, providing a year-round programme of silent meditation retreats in the Buddhist Vipassana tradition. Retreats range from weekends to week-long experiences and cater to both individuals and groups. If you’re looking for a luxurious wellness retreat, this might not be for you. But if you’re up for a challenge, know a thing or two about meditation and want to experience true, distraction-free silence, it might just change your life.
Zabalo River, Ecuador
Zabalo River, in northeast Ecuador, is the world’s first Wilderness Quiet Park. Certified by Quiet Parks International for its measurable lack of noise, this tranquil black water river in the Amazon Rainforest is leading the way in the emerging field of quiet, eco-friendly tourism. Cottages are available to rent in Zabalo, a small village inhabited by the people of Cofán, who are among the oldest surviving indigenous cultures in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Thanks to a grant from WWF, you will soon be able to travel through the river on electric canoes, powered using solar power. “Success for these people means that they can continue to live as people of the forest and continue to manage large areas of the Amazon Rainforest to the benefit of our planetary health”, says Gordon Hempton, co-founder of Quiet Parks International.
Unplugged, UK
Go cold turkey on your screen time for a full three days with Unplugged, the UK’s first truly off-grid cabin escape, located just a few hours outside of London in the idyllic British countryside. Reconnect with a partner, a friend or yourself: around 40% of Unplugged’s guests are solo travelers. While a stay at one of Unplugged’s cabins tends to last for 72 hours or so, its effects supposedly last much longer. “Going offline for a few days simply helps you realise that you can”, says co-founder Hector Hughes. “You can survive three days without technology and the world doesn’t end when you go offline. And you can do this any time, inside or outside an Unplugged cabin.” Here, smartphones are swapped for old-school Nokia phones (snake included), and guests are provided with a physical map, an instant film camera, books, board games, and cooking equipment.
Àni Resorts, multiple locations
With locations in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Caribbean, Àni Private Resorts provides luxurious hideaways in beautiful, far-flung locations. The resorts, which cater to all kinds of group travellers, are designed with accessibility in mind. You can read more about Àni’s resorts and the emphasis they place on accessible travel in our recent interview with founder Tim Reynolds.
Black Tomato, multiple locations
Black Tomato offers unique, personalized travel experiences. With their Blink camps, you can co-design your own bespoke luxury accommodation in the world’s most remote and untouched landscapes, from the Bolivian Salt Flats to the Grand Canyon. They also offer a Get Lost experience that promises total disconnection. Based on the idea that ‘sometimes you need to get lost to find yourself’. this package offers travelers the opportunity to literally ‘get lost’ in a remote location and use basic survival skills to find their way through the unknown.
MindTravel, multiple locations
MindTravel’s silent experiences are all centered around music, nature and mindfulness. They host immersive ‘silent’ concerts on the beach: live music is played through special headphones to an audience lying down staring at the stars, creating an experience that’s at once individual and collective (think silent disco, but mindful). Also on offer are silent walking meditations (also headphone facilitated) and even underwater headphone experiences, where music is played through a network of underwater speakers as you float.
A version of this article originally appeared on Condé Nast Traveller.