Sunday, December 11, 2005

Nile File 3

Part 3 of a travel feature about the Nile, this time looking at the experience of tourism in Egypt: "I've finally figured out why otherwise fairly normal people become tourists: They are motivated by a secret desire to revert to childhood. For tourism is essentially a journey back in time. By travelling to a foreign land, with an unfamiliar language, customs, food, and sometimes even loo signs, the tourist in effect transforms himself into a child who must be led by the hand, literally and metaphorically, through this strange and potentially daunting terrain by a series of adults — guides, translators, taxi drivers, hotel staff etc — who cosset and guard him from the more egregious follies of his own inexperience".
See the above web page for more (there are four pages - click the Next link at the bottom of the page).

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