Every once in a while I come across an article that really speaks to me, that perfectly captures some absolute truth or other gem of wisdom I hold sacred.
This time around it is writer Rory Maclean who, in a recent Guardian article, addresses the concept of a “lonely planet” become even less so. She travels to Kathmanu to speak with one of the original hippies who took off from Britain in the 1960s and headed east towards India with no travel books in hand. This was uncharted territory where few tourists had ventured and even less books existed to guide the way. This was a time when “pushing the frontier” meant just that. Travel was jumping off a bus in some strange town in Bhutan you knew nothing about and hoping you could find accommodations for the night.
Over the course of time, however, as the travel industry boomed and “more and more young people hit the road, fewer and fewer roads remained unmarked by their passing,” Maclean writes. Today, guidebooks cover nearly every inch of this planet and as a result, there are very few frontiers to cross. Those isolated villages, empty beaches, and secret pagodas so joyously discovered by random chance are now crammed with travelers clutching the latest edition of Rough Guide or Lonely Planet that has pointed them there. The places themselves change to accommodate such travelers as locals hope to grab increasingly larger chunks of the $500 billion-a-year travel industry.
It’s a sad irony, but travelers have indeed ruined traveling.
And, I’m just as guilty as everyone else.