Time crystallises positive experiences of travel. You remember squeezing between a cage of chickens and a nomadic herdsman on a 12-hour bus journey through the desert, and you’ve got a photo to prove it.
The most vivid and valuable memories are those that have never seen a guidebook, never been experienced by anybody else- Stephen Bailey
But you’ve forgotten how cantankerous and unsociable you were for 11 painful hours as your dehydrated body went numb and dripped with sweat and your bladder convulsed because there were no toilet stops. You don’t remember how exhausted you were, how you were secretly praying for things to be easy.
At the time you just wanted solitude, familiarity and a break from the madness. Tomorrow was for exploring.
Think about the scenario now. What happens next when you alight at that unfamiliar town, your mental energy depleted after the memorable journey? Turn to the safety blanket, of course. The trusted guidebook.
But when you really consider what that involves it sounds slightly absurd. To ignore the local advice around you, and your own instinct, to plump for the subjective opinions of one guy who passed through the same town three years ago.
One guy who probably stayed for a day checking out 10 guesthouses before dictating what travellers should do: “Guesthouse A is run down and has problems with bedbugs, the owner of B is angry and unwelcoming, C has basic rooms just don’t expect a working shower, but D is run by an incredible family who do everything to keep guests happy in quaint, good value rooms.”
But when you get there, guesthouse D is fully booked and you’re wondering what all the fuss is about.
In Georgia I met a Lonely Planet author. He’d been in the country for four weeks researching the update for Lonely Planet’s Caucuses book.
He shrugged his shoulders when I suggested he had a good job; that day he’d been to 11 guesthouses to find out prices and contact information, tomorrow he was going to do the same in another town. Deadlines were always tight. There was always another country that needed visiting because another guidebook required updating. In short, there wasn’t enough time to do a thorough job. His income depended on producing more information about more places in a shorter amount of time.
With Lonely Planet the world is no longer lonely. Ten years ago there was a variety of popular guidebooks on the market. Since their takeover by the BBC, Lonely Planet has gone from strength to strength and has become the de facto English language guidebook in virtually every country across the world.
A few specialist publishers hang on in there (Trailblazer trekking guides a rare example) but I would bet that Lonely Planet was the last guidebook 90 per cent of people used.
As Lonely Planet’s popularity has grown its impact on local businesses has become more profound. Getting a mention in Lonely Planet can make or break them.
Take Pokhara in Nepal, a small town dependent on tourism with hundreds of small travel agencies offering near identical services to support treks in the popular Annapurna region. The successful ones used to be those that created the greatest word of mouth reputation among travellers in the region. Now it is those that had their name printed in the latest Lonely Planet.
And then there are the towns like Udaipur, in India, where anyone who was ever mentioned in any edition of Lonely Planet has a big sign outside their business advertising that fact.
The takeover has also brought a new style which accelerated Lonely Planet’s gradual move from showing to telling and from the objective to subjective.
Each place is opened with a preamble about the author’s perceptions and experiences. Just enough information to help you decide whether a place is worth visiting. And exactly the same information that other foreigners used to make the same decision.
There are also little boxed off sections titled ‘off the beaten track’ – surely contradictory, because in the update there will be something derogatory about how a quaint quiet place is getting touristy and losing its appeal.
Early Lonely Planets had valuable advice like where to get a fake international student ID card and tips on hitchhiking. This has been replaced with unanimous warnings about the dangers of a place or an activity – a by-product, perhaps, of a more zealous legal team the BBC takeover has brought.
Lonely Planets no longer show you objectively how to be safe when you take risks. They subjectively tell you what is dangerous.
However, getting off that bus, feeling that way, the Lonely Planet is unquestionably useful. There is probably a map to organise your bearings, a guideline price of a taxi ride into the old town which helps you to not get ripped off, where to get a pizza because you can’t handle any more local food, and which guesthouse is likely to be popular.
But that usefulness has generated a lazy over-reliance. If you arrive in an unfamiliar town, but full of energy and a desire to explore, it is still the dependable Lonely Planet that’s opened and, yes, guesthouse D sounds best, let’s just go there.
And that bus scene, that positive experience crystallised by time, next to the toothless nomadic herdsman you felt you got to know through all the gestured communication? Why do you remember it so fondly? Why did it become such a great story to share with friends? Because it was completely unique to you.
The most vivid and valuable memories are those that have never seen a guidebook, never been experienced by anybody else.
That impromptu invitation from a family for dinner and a bed, the crazy local bar beneath a shopping centre where everyone wanted to buy you drinks, a village someone took you to when you stopped and asked for directions.
And they’re the experiences more likely to happen when you get off the bus and you don’t even know about guesthouse D, or where you are, and you just see what happens.
They are the experiences we are in danger of losing as we move further towards an over- reliance on the guidebook. It’s time to be a shepherd, not a sheep.