Sandy Gourlay knows about long hours and stress. As general manager of Oran Mor, the busy bar, restaurant and theatre complex in Glasgow’s west end, her duties extend to handling difficult customers and bundling late-night revellers into taxis home.

When any of her 16 junior managers call in sick, it is Gourlay who juggles the rosters while telling them to drink plenty of fluids. “At the end of a hard day, I go home, my husband makes me something to eat and I collapse,” she says. “There’s just about time to read the paper before bed.”

Perhaps the 38-year-old dreams about holidays spent doing nothing more strenuous than topping up her tan. Not so. Gourlay is among the growing number of Scots eschewing conventional breaks in favour of “meaningful travel”.

According to a survey by Mintel, natural disasters such as the Boxing Day tsunami and last month’s south Asian earthquake have persuaded more people to spend their holidays carrying out humanitarian or relief work abroad. Up to 64% of those questioned declared they were more likely to travel to help those in need or work on environmental projects.

More people are now putting the sentiment into practice. Holiday companies offer package deals for customers who would rather build a classroom in Tanzania than sample game reserves, or tend endangered elephants than stay in hip hotels.

The internet travel firm Opodo, for example, has 300 options for humanitarian holidaymakers. From as little as a few hundred pounds, customers can do anything from bear monitoring in Ecuador to teaching English in Mongolia.

Tricia Thompson, 30, comes from Drymen in the west of Scotland and works in sports marketing. Her previous two holidays were kayaking in Belize and sightseeing in South Africa’s Cape Town. For the next three months, however, she will be based in the south of India working with a charity called the Society for Rural Development (SRD). Her work in the Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, will involve setting up an orphanage, school and church for the Dalits, India’s social outcasts.

“In the village there are people who are high-caste and own the land and then there are the untouchables, people who have no real rights,” she says. “There are also health issues among the untouchables with HIV and Aids, and there’s a real lack of education. Drop-out rates are high, especially among girls. Often they leave school at 14 to go and work in the fields. And those who do go to school must sit separately from the rest of the children.”

The ability to tackle culture shock is essential for any humanitarian traveller. “It’s an amazing experience being in a town where no tourist will ever come, to see how locals really live,” says Thompson. “I’ve done a lot of travelling, but this is a chance to be accepted into a community.”

No hotel, then. Instead, a local family have given over part of their house to her. Being the only volunteer from Britain, she worries a little about being lonely. The nearest people who speak fluent English live about 20 minutes’ drive away. “I think I’ll miss my family and friends most of all,” she says. Thompson will probably be too busy to pine much, spending her day visiting nearby villages, many of which are suffering after recent monsoons wiped out crops.

Word of mouth and a feeling of impotence in the face of shocking news images are often the factors that push people towards such holidays. “I think it is a combination of watching world events and people feeling that, having sat in an office, they are looking for something to do with their skills that is more of a challenge and more meaningful,” says Elizabeth Byrne of the Scottish charity Challenges Worldwide.

That was certainly the case for Gourlay. She recalls her horror as she watched the tsunami disaster unfold on her television screen. “I just couldn’t believe what was happening.” Then her colleague Rony Bridges went out with Spirit Aid in March. “When he came back and told us all about the orphanage and the children, another colleague, Cheryl Beattie, and I knew instinctively that we would love to go.”

In August, encouraged by her husband, Joe, and their 15-year-old son, Christopher, Gourlay put her plan into action, joining Beattie and Bridges on the 26-hour journey to the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Four hours later, a people carrier dropped them in the south of the island, the area worst affected by the tsunami, near the Lake School Orphanage at Hikkaduwa.

For the next six days, they worked with orphans and families. “We got back so much more than we gave.” None of them will ever forget the welcome they got from about 50 boys aged 12 to 16. “When the van came up the hill they all ran out to meet us. When we got out they all wanted to take Cheryl’s and my hands and smell our skin.”

Some of the children lost parents among the 226,000 or so killed by the tsunami, while others are in the orphanage because their mother or father can no longer afford to look after them.

Gourlay helped distribute clothes, bed linen and paint to decorate the boys’ rooms. Spirit Aid, based in Glasgow, has also set up a working farm for the orphanage to provide food and work for the children. Much of Gourlay’s time was also taken up helping the Morrakula Camp of 18 families left homeless.

Since the tsunami, the families have moved from tents to small huts. “It was a case of ‘what do you need?’ and we would try to get it,” she says. Basics such as gas stoves and cutlery provided by the charity mean the local people can cook hot food again. Spirit Aid and Oran Mor have also each provided two fishing boats. Each can support 15 families.

For Gourlay, whose previous holiday before Sri Lanka was on a beach with her family in Bulgaria, the experience was life-changing. “I would thoroughly recommend doing something similar,” she says. “I left my heart there.” Which makes a welcome change from the usual holiday woes of sunburn and lost luggage.

Spirit Aid, 0141 552 6111; Challenges Worldwide, 0845 2000 342; International Voluntary Service, 0131 226 6722

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