On the Road

A guide to the Lonely Planet, guidebooks and the consumer travel industry

The evolution of the travel guide books was always going to be bad news for the planet. They’re responsible for a generation of consumer travelers who talk about ‘doing’ places and a tourism industry that leeches the life out of places that really used to be fun to travel to.

Yet shit, when you arrive in a new town in the middle of the night in Mexico, you want to find a cheap place to bed down for the night and the Lonely Planet tells you just where to go.

The guide book phenomenon has a lot in common with the spread of mobile phones – we never used to need them and suddenly they’ve become indispensable. If I don’t have my guide book how will i know where to sleep? Where to eat? Where to go?

Well you might try the old fashioned solution of actually talking to people. It’s kinda the point of travel that you do attempt to interact with the locals and even get lost from time to time – that way you discover something different than the other million backpackers with Lonely Planets and preserve the sense of adventure.

The truth is many of today’s backpackers are happy to travel in an insulated world of hostels
, tourist cafes and sightseeing without ever really experiencing what a place is like. If you have a guide book between you and the place and people you’re visiting then your experience is limited to the prejudices of the authors.

Like mobile phones, travel guide books do have their uses, it’s just a question of knowing where to stop. Borrow one from a friend, write down the names of some cheap accommodation in the big cities and then ditch the thing. Do you really need an extra kilo of restaurant listings in your rucksack?

There are better and worse travel guides of course and here we review some of them for the 21th century traveler. Who knows, maybe you always dreamed of a job writing for a guidebook...

And then the next time a backpacker talks about ‘doing’ a country you can reply:

‘Oh, as in “Debbie Does Dallas?’ (obscure joke about a sex film)

Back to Top - Print this page