The albums on my shelf, and now this digital version, are catalogued by place. We have been privileged enough to travel at least a fortnight each year over the last half century. But I confess that travel has lost its allure. I am less energetic. Air travel is dehumanizing. Mass marketing of even the most remote places has drained the joy of discovery (traffic jams at the top of Everest!). Social media and rising prosperity (a boon, of course) have homogenized culture. Travel in those 50 years has become an industrial process; I am now always aware that I am the raw material being rendered. And the world often seems tired and resentful of such feigned hospitality. As others have noted, our travels kill what we travel to find.
On each trip we do stumble on places on the verge of disappearing or not yet commodified into tourist attractions. Those discoveries, though now rare, still make the effort worthwhile.
