Everything, Everywhere, Just Travel

Travelling widens your outlook of the whole world, makes you a global citizen, learn cultures, get to know different languages and its dialects. Never quit travelling.

beppi wrote:

I think individual tourists (as I would call them) are more harmful, because they spoil places out of the beaten track and are trailblazers of the mass tourists (who only spoil known places further).

No, I don't think individuals spoil places at all, or are the least bit harmful. After all, who do they tell? Their mothers and grandmas back in their home countries, that's all. These days they can go online and tell the world, of course, but I certainly feel no responsibility for mass tourism discovering the places I myself discovered years before.

Gordon Barlow wrote:

beppi wrote:

I think individual tourists (as I would call them) are more harmful, because they spoil places out of the beaten track and are trailblazers of the mass tourists (who only spoil known places further).

I certainly feel no responsibility for mass tourism discovering the places I myself discovered years before.

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi … mp;bih=685
This link is a good example of what I'm talking about. I visited the pools in 1965, driving up the hill on a dirt track, with nobody to question our presence. Now look at the crowds - but nothing I did brought them there. What happened was just that the national tourism bureau became organised enough to realise what a wonderful place it was. The same sort of thing happened at Gallipoli. When we (my companion and I) visited that historic site, the "museum" was a tiny wooden hut with a couple of old Lee-Enfield rifles stacked against the walls, and a shepherd whose side-job was to leave his sheep for long enough to run down and charge us a penny each. Again, nothing we did attracted the tourists that go there now. The tourism bureau just woke up to themselves!

Weren‘t you among the first to show them that these places are attractive to visitors?
The rest was just common sense and economic savvyness on their part.
If you think you can visit somewhere without leaving marks, you delude yourself!

beppi wrote:

Weren‘t you among the first to show them that these places are attractive to visitors?
The rest was just common sense and economic savvyness on their part.
If you think you can visit somewhere without leaving marks, you delude yourself!

Tourism can be done without ruining the ecosystem.
Bali was bad in the early 80 Ann 90s. It is now getting better. And most importantly the other islands in that region have learnt from the mistake that Bali made. The best environmentally sustainable resorts in the world now can be found in the eastern region of Indonesia.

What ruin a place is not mass tourism per se.
It is a combination of:
• Holiday Inn crowd (poor tourist)
• Greedy government official
• Day trippers (mainly from cruise ships).

The three above aspects combined will result in a deadly combination!

I prefer visitors than tourists. Visitors stay for at least a week in a place, get to know the locals and make an attempt to live like the locals. This way the benefit that the local can get from their visits will off set the carbon footprint print that they have made during their visit. And hopefully they will comeback. I did.