Weighing up whether you should go on a gay hiking travel trip? Well, we’re going to give you the lowdown on the pros and cons of gay hiking travel. Hopefully, we can help to make the decision a little bit easier for you.
Before we dive into those pros and cons, we do want to point out that when we talk about gay hiking travel, we are talking about trips booked directly with a travel agent or a tour company. We are not talking about the trips that you plan yourself. After all, there aren’t many pros and cons to those. You either walk, or you don’t.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
The Pros of Gay Hiking Travel
Let’s start with the pros of gay hiking travel, shall we? The reasons why you may want to hit those trails with a few other gay people.
Travel To Gay-Friendly Destinations
As a gay person, one of the most difficult things about planning a hiking trip is that you need to research whether a location is gay-friendly. If it isn’t gay-friendly, then you can’t really be yourself. For example, there are plenty of what we assume are amazing hiking trails in countries that we will never, ever visit. This is because being gay there is dangerous, either from a legal perspective or a cultural perspective.
When you book a gay-friendly hiking travel tour with a proper company and they say that it is a gay-friendly trip, then somebody has done all that research for you. They’ll be making sure that your trip is done in a safe location where you are free to be yourself. It takes a lot of stress out of the planning of your holiday, and that is fantastic. Holidays are not meant to be stressful, after all.
Gay hiking travel Travel With Like-Minded People
Much More Active Holiday
Ok. So, thai part isn’t necessarily tied to being gay. It is one of the major benefits of a good hiking trip.
As you can probably imagine, a hiking travel trip is going to be much more active than one where you are just laying around the beach all the time. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Sometimes, if you want to truly relax then it is nice to go on a walk through nature.
When you are booking your gay hiking travel trip, you’ll have tons and tons of options to choose from when it comes to destinations, even if you are only focusing on gay-friendly destinations. This means that there are plenty of different locales to explore. You could be hiking through the mountains, through canyons, across the beach, or through massive fields. The world is your oyster!
Of course, you’ll also be getting much fitter as you go on those epic hikes. Honestly, this is the whole reason why we love gay hiking travel. We do a lot of hiking ourselves. It is always a huge amount of fun to dive into. But, traveling makes it so much better. We get to explore brand-new locations, all while keeping our bodies nice and trim.
Travel With the Minimum of Fuss
We suppose that this is something that really does tie back to the first point. When you book gay hiking travel through a proper tour company, then they are going to be planning everything for you. You don’t really need to put too much thought into it. You just book the trip and away you go.
Of course, the amount of planning involved will differ from gay travel company to gay travel company, so check what they say on their web pages. However, the vast majority of them will do the bulk of the planning for you. Pretty much all you need to do is buy your hiking gear and get to the destination that you’re living from. You may even need to get some food, although many of these hiking tours will be an all-inclusive package.
Travel With Like-Minded People
Assuming that you are going on a proper gay-friendly hiking travel trip, then you’ll be traveling with like-minded people. You’ll be in the company of people that are fully accepting of who you are. Not only does this mean that you are going to feel a whole lot safer when you are out on those trails, but you may even end up making a few friends.
If you decided to plan the trip yourself (and this shouldn’t be too tricky), then you don’t really have this as a benefit. Sure, it shouldn’t be too hard to find hiking trails that are known for attracting a lot of gay people to them, which is nice. It is more the fact that you probably won’t find it easy to get a group to walk with.
We can’t tell you the number of times we have headed out on a gay hiking travel tour and ended up making friends. Some of them have even ended up as friends for life. In some cases, we have even seen some solo gay hikers finding a romantic partner on the trip. So, if you are in the same boat as them, you may get to enjoy the same!
Gay Hiking Travel Limited in Travel Destinations
The Cons of Gay Hiking Travel
So, now the pros of gay hiking travel are out of the way, we need to start to dive into the downsides of gay hiking travel, of which there are a few. However, we will tell you that unless you absolutely hate hiking, most of these downsides probably shouldn’t be enough to deter you from having fun on the trails! We’ll let you know why as we go through them.
Can Be More Expensive
Again, we are working on the assumption that you are booking your gay hiking travel trip l through a tour company here, rather than planning everything yourself.
When you go through a third-party for your hiking tour, you are going to get everything planned out for you, but that is going to come at a cost. You may find that some of these hiking tours work out more expensive than if you booked everything yourself. Although, you do get some ‘extras’ that probably make up for the cost (this will vary from hiking tour company to hiking tour company).
Don’t worry, though. We are not talking about a massive difference in price here. You aren’t going to be paying tons extra. It’ll just be a small amount, and thus going through a tour group may not necessarily be great if you are hiking on a budget.
Limited in Travel Destinations
Gay hiking travel is relatively new, and you don’t really have a huge number of companies that are offering it at the moment. This means that if you want a fully-planned trip, then chances are that your destinations are going to be limited. Although, in most cases, you are going to be limited to some of the best destinations in the world so it is not a major issue.
We think the biggest problem is that if you go through a tour group, you are going to be on a very rigid schedule. Everything is going to be planned out for you, and you can’t really take a detour. For example, there’ll likely be set stops on the route, set hotels, etc. Again, we know that there are some people who are going to love the fact that their entire hiking holiday has been planned for them, but if you are the type of person who really likes to take control over every single detail of the trip, then it may not necessarily be the best choice for your needs.
Can’t Hike at Your Own Pace
This will depend on the type of gay hiking travel that you are engaging in, so you’ll have to check the tour company.
If you are in a group of people on the trip, then you can’t really hike at your own pace. You need to go the pace of the rest of the group, which means that you should have a bit of experience before you hit the trails. However, some tour groups will have rough guides in place for the difficulty of their trips e.g. if you are a beginner, then you want the tours that have been designed for beginners.
Final Thoughts
Now we have gone through the pros and cons of gay hiking travel, you’ll probably know whether it is worth heading out alone. Generally speaking, if you love hiking and you want the minimum of fuss when you are planning your hiking trip, then it is always good to get on a gay hiking travel tour. You may even end up making a few friends on the trip. If you are not a fan of hiking, or you want a bit more control over what you do on your hiking expedition, then gay hiking travel isn’t for you. If you want to give it a go, you may just want to take a day or two on a normal holiday to check it out.
Hello, my name is Gay Worlley - no, really - and I love learning about all things queer. I am also a qualified gardener and enjoy traveling in my spare time.
I love sharing my travel stories with anyone who will listen, and now I want to share them with the world through my new website! Not only that, but I want to inspire others and teach you about LGBTQ+ travel, queer media, pride, and much more.
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