As travel bloggers and people who love to explore new places, 2020 has been somewhat of a lost year as we cancelled all our travel plans. Needless to say, the travel/tourism and hospitality industry have been one of the worst hit by the pandemic and even though travel is slowly starting to pick up, there’s no saying when things will be the same as they used to be.

Earlier this month, we decided to take a short break and travelled to Goa. If you follow me on Instagram, you will know that I talked about travelling Responsibly and Safely… I also received a lot of questions from you asking whether or not it was safe to travel – so today’s post is going to be all about our experience travelling to Goa and our tips for travelling responsibly and safely during the pandemic. Let me begin by sharing the most basic travel tips:

• Wear a mask, especially in public places
• Carry sanitisers with you –  hand sanitisers, aerosol sprays and/or sanitising wipes
• Maintain social distancing

We flew from Mumbai – Goa (and back) with SpiceJet and had a really good experience. SpiceJet requests travellers to print out their baggage tags in advance and stick them on luggage to minimise contact at the airport kiosks, so that’s what we did. Once we arrived at the Mumbai airport, we waited in a queue outside the entrance where our temperature was checked and we were asked to sanitise our hands. We then had to show our tickets and ID cards to a personnel behind a glass shield. Once inside the airport, we headed to the SpiceJet counters to check in our bags and collect our boarding passes. Here again, the SpiceJet staff were all wearing masks and were behind a glass shield to minimise contact. We headed towards security check next and then decided to wait close to the boarding gate for the remaining time.

Due to the pandemic, a lot of shops/stores are closed including eating joints, so we would recommend that you carry water and some light eats with you, especially if you are travelling with kids. Also, if possible, try and avoid meals served on board.

Bathroom visits is another thing that is stress inducing these days, so keep aerosol sprays and/or sanitising wipes handy with you. We recommend the Godrej protekt on the go disinfectant spray as it is travel friendly and can be easily carried in a handbag. We were really impressed to see that the Mumbai and Goa airport had installed toilet sanitisers in all WC’s to ensure safety and cleanliness.

Talking about our flight experience – SpiceJet provided each passenger with a Passenger Safety Kit that included a face shield, mask and sanitiser sachets. All passengers who were allotted the middle seats were also given a safety gown to wear. All in all, great effort by the airlines to ensure everyone’s safety 🙂

Once we landed in Goa and collected our luggage, a car from ITC Grand Goa was waiting to pick us up. Click HERE to read all about our stay at ITC and know more about their WeAssure cleaning and hygiene protocol.

We also chose to stay at a budget hotel for a few days and even though the staff wore masks at all times, we did take some extra precautions to make sure our stay was safe. Here’s a few things we did and recommend you keep in mind too while travelling:

• Sanitise the bedding and towels using a disinfectant spray
• Avoid getting the room cleaned during your stay. We made sure to tidy up every morning and night, so we didn’t even feel the need to get our room cleaned for 3 days.
• Don’t skimp on the size of your suitcase. We carried extra clothes on the trip because every time we stepped out to explore the city, we would have a shower and change our clothes as soon as we returned to the hotel
• Carry an extra laundry bag to store away dirty laundry and designate one section of your suitcase to this bag … the whole idea is to keep these clothes separated from fresh ones
• If you want to be extra careful while dining out, keep eco-friendly/reusable cutlery in your bag. There are some amazing bamboo spoons and forks available in the market. Also, a metal straw can come really handy to sip on drinks. If not, remember the disinfectant wipes we talked about earlier? You can always wipe the cutlery provided by the restaurant and then have your meal. And remember – WASH YOUR HANDS before and after a meal 🙂
• Be mindful of little details that you would otherwise not pay attention to. For example, while we were in Goa, we rented a bike … under normal circumstances we would happily wear the helmet provided by the bike rental, but this time we made sure we sanitised and disinfected the inside and outside of the helmet before we used it. Not just that, we also wore a cap under the helmet for that added barrier and protection
• Be mindful of things you touch and come in contact with, especially in public places. The best examples would be ATM machines, lift buttons, handrails, etc. Be sure to sanitise the surface before you touch it and also sanitise your hands afterwards. If possible, try to use contactless payment apps like GPay and Paytm to make payments
• Sanitise your phone and other gadgets as we tend to place these items on several surfaces and then forget to clean them. We personally like to use a sanitising wipe for our phones and laptops
• Once you’re back home and have unpacked, do remember to sanitise your luggage before storing it away 🙂

These are some of the travel tips that we can recommend for travelling safely and responsibly during covid. We would also like to stress on the fact that each of us is not only responsible for our on health and safety, but also of those around us, so ALWAYS wear a face mask when outside. Another thing we wanted to say before we end today’s article is that please support local businesses as much as possible. Buy local, eat local and support the people that need the help during these trying times. If you have any travel tips to add, please do leave them in the comments section below. Stay safe, stay healthy 🙂