Still roughing it

We are all tourists now, and there is no escape. The first thing we see as we jet round the world is a filth of our own making. Resort hotel seepage. Takeaway detritus. Travel, in its pre-package sense, can no longer be said to exist. Airports even have ‘comfort zones’ with dental clinics, cinemas and (at New York’s JFK) funeral parlours.

Some travel writers, desperate to simulate the hardship of Victorian travel, have imposed artificial difficulties on themselves. The late Eighties saw a glut of such daft titles as Hang-Gliding to Borneo and To Bognor on a Rhinoceros. In every case, however, it would have been quicker to take the train. Why windsurf across the Mojave when there’s a decent coach service? The genre was revived somewhat in 1983, when Granta issued the first of its fashionable ‘Travel Writing’ issues. Norman Lewis, James Fenton and other left-leaning authors exploited the narrative devices of fiction to forge an incisively brilliant reportage.