In this article, Tom Robbins describes how he flew from Heathrow to Muscat for a weekend break in Oman's fabled Empty Quarter. The luxury holiday included "giant 4x4s painted a sexy military matt beige", mobile safari camps ("people rush out and present us with cold towels and drinks"), and a British tour leader who moonlights as a mercenary in the Sultan of Oman's army.
It occurred to me that this could be the future of travel - rich Westerners paying lots of money to spend time in very isolated parts of the globe, guided and guarded by private military companies who come equipped with high tech weaponry, solar powered applicances, and all terrain vehicles.
On an overcrowded, clamorous and polluted planet, the wealthy will pay for privileged access to quiet, unspoilt and untroubled wildernesses, as far from the violent unwashed as possible. They will fly in private jets direct from walled western enclaves to distant retreats, shunning the world's megacities, which threaten deadly diseases, car bombings, and kidnappings. Expect the Empty Quarter, Kamchatka and the atolls of Kiribati to come into their own as travel destinations.
As for the rest of us - well, forget about backpacking on the cheap. The collapse of centralized authority, the rise of warlords, and endemic conflict and banditry, will make much of the Third World a "no go" area. Soaring oil prices and carbon charges will make air travel a distant memory of the golden age of cheap and plentiful oil. As it has been for most of recorded history, travel will be done by soldiers, sailors, merchants and migrants, as a matter of livelihood not leisure.
(Photo: The Guardian.)
This brings to mind the story of Chris McCandless: http://www.amazon.com/Into-Wild-MTI-Jon-Krakauer/dp/0307387178/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-5197882-6337556?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193335165&sr=1-1
Posted by: Jeff | Friday, 26 October 2007 at 07:00 AM