For example, we can operationally parallel transport a tangent vector of a geodesic along the geodesic by letting a particle free fall. I'm wondering if there's any clever way to parallel transport vectors in more general scenarios, say, a non-tangent vector along a geodesic, or even non-geodesic? By "operational" I mean establishing some experimental set up and making nature do the parallel transport, instead of knowing the metric information beforehand and calculating the parallels.