With the advent of cycles, buses, motor cars, trains and aeroplanes, walking tours are seldom undertaken now in the country. In ancient days such tours were very common. They were undertaken mainly for religious purposes, be it to Rameswaram or to far off Varanasi.
They were also undertaken for attending marriages Although on those occasions, the middle class people would go in carts but most of the people would follow the carts on foot.
The advantages of walking tours are many. Walking leads to exercise of the body and fill the lungs with fresh air. Both are conducive to health. The difficulties experienced on the way would harden the bodies of walkers and create a feeling of self-reliance and the ability to overcome hardships.
A walking tour gives a splendid opportunity to come in contact with a variety of people and converse with them and thus understand the widely differing nature of men, their thoughts, realise their shortcomings and help to evolve a feeling to fellowship.
A large number of places visited on the way would open our eyes to the fact that this world is quite a large one and would give us chances of studying the customs and habits of their inhabitants.
Apart from these, such tours afford ample scope for closely observing nature in its different settings and help us to appreciate its beauty. All this is a liberal education by itself tending to enlarge our mental horizon, widen our sympathies and enrich our experiences.
Though school excursions are nowadays made by rail and bus, yet there is ample scope for walking tours, and student excursionists undertake them under expert guidance, i.e. under teachers who could direct their attention to various aspects of nature, beautiful scenery, varieties of plants and animal life and the different kinds of rocks that lie on the way.
