Just reading this, and no I'm not a Daily Heil reader but it was bought to my attention on another site and found the article fascinating none the less. I love these old travel guides, accounts of people's adventures to far flung places and above all the photographs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2733416/The-riotously-PC-travel-guides-The-informed-detailed-authoritative-unguardedly-rude-Baedeker-Guides.html



And before English feathers are ruffled, we have the accounts of Mrs Mortimer for balance. But at least Baedeker actually went to the places he wrote about, unlike Mrs Mortimer.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4698196

All in all very funny, but in their own way also informative. Not only in how various countries were, but also the mindset and common attitudes of people in the 19th century.

BBC have made a number of series based on the Victorian railway guide books of George Bradshaw:

Thomas Cook's first tour was a railway outing organised for the Temperance Society in 1841.

This advert is from 1850, as Thomas became more ambitious.



http://www.thomascook.com/thomas-cook-history/

The Italian poet, Petrach, claimed to be the first man since antiquity to have climbed a mountain for fun;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_of_Mont_Ventoux

Could these people be classed as tourists?

I've been pondering the history of tourism and it seems that whilst it has been around for centuries it wasn't until the 19th century that people actually began to travel for the pleasure of travel itself. Before that travel usually involved a purpose, spiritual (pilgrimages), medical (health spas) or just plain business. It could even be said that Marco Polo had a purpose for his wanderings, that of discovery?

Islanddawn wrote:

I've been pondering the history of tourism and it seems that whilst it has been around for centuries it wasn't until the 19th century that people actually began to travel for the pleasure of travel itself. Before that travel usually involved a purpose, spiritual (pilgrimages), medical (health spas) or just plain business. It could even be said that Marco Polo had a purpose for his wanderings, that of discovery?

 Islanddawn,

I has a lot to say as about Goethe and the Grand Tour and the ladies' travelling...but have first to elaborate the Salian Franks for Nordmann...and perhaps then too late...nearing midnight on the European peninsula...

Kind regards and with esteem for the always interesting subjects that you introduce on this forum from Paul.

Islanddawn wrote:

I've been pondering the history of tourism and it seems that whilst it has been around for centuries it wasn't until the 19th century that people actually began to travel for the pleasure of travel itself. Before that travel usually involved a purpose, spiritual (pilgrimages), medical (health spas) or just plain business. It could even be said that Marco Polo had a purpose for his wanderings, that of discovery?

 Islanddawn,

did some research about tourism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism

http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/traveling/index.pl?page=2;read=1700


I think the first travels for pleasure were the Grand Tours. And even those, as they had the purpose of bringing youngsters from the British nobilty to maturity while introducing them to arts (including Paris and the rest, not only arts) and clasical monuments...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour

 I did a lot of research for "The Italian Journey" of Goethe, which was for Goethe quite an episode in his life, but apart from the omnipresent Wiki I didn't find that much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Journey


And then: the women...who said that women...
About woman travellers:
http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/essay-07-07.html


I saw in the time a documentary...better a dramatized historical account...about Gertrude Bell...certainly the equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia...


And more about female travellers:
http://www.munseys.com/diskeight/wote.pdf
http://ontheluce.com/2013/11/08/a-celebration-of-female-travel-pioneers/


Kind regards and with esteem,

Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

I think the first travels for pleasure were the Grand Tours.

It has been suggested that the 'Hippie Trail' of the 1960s and 1970s was an extension of the Grand Tour. It's said that the Hippies were the heirs of the Beatniks of the 1950s who in turn were the heirs of a long line of 'counter-culturalists' dating back in time including the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Lord Byron and so on. The era of the classic, aristocratic Grand Tour can be seen to have ended with the advent of steam transportation, although the idea of the Grand Tour continued throughout the 19th Century and even into the 20th. Indeed, there's no reason why someone today shouldn't embark on a Grand Tour of Europe if they so wish. What steam trains, river-going steamboats and ocean-going steamships did, however, was to begin the democratisation of travel. Nevertheless, foreign travel for pleasure generally remained the preserve of the aristocatic and the upper middle classes until the Great War.              

The era of the Hippie Trail can be said to have started around 1959 and ended around 1980. There was more than 1 trail. The primary trail went east from Turkey towards India. Hippies would start that trail from where the Grand Tour of Europe ended (i.e. in Istanbul) and set off into Asia in search of enlightenment, adventure and, of course, hashish. The eastern end of the trail would vary, with some ending their trek in Kathmandu while others aimed for Goa or Sri Lanka. Others went further still onto Thailand or even Bali. There were other shorter trails, however, such as that from southwest Europe to Morocco, while the west coast of North America had its own Pacific trail from Vancouver down thru San Francisco and Monterey in California and onwards south to the Lower California peninsula or Puerto Vallarta in Mexico.

As with the Grand Tourists, most Hippie Trailers came from the upper or middle classes. This stands to reason, after all, because a certain degree of education, financial security and self-assurance is required to adopt an alternative lifestyle and embark upon adventurous travel. Whereas the era of the Grand Tour lasted for nearly 200 years, the era of the Hippie Trail lasted barely 20. The year 1979 would be critical with the Islamic revolution in Iran occuring in April of that year while the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan followed in December. These events effectively blocked off the trail between Turkey and Pakistan to all but the most determined of travellers. At the same time, the hitherto thriving hippie destinations of Marrakech and Mogador (Essaouira) in Morocco became the objects of the Moroccan government's periodic crackdowns on the narcotics trade. In an unlikely imitation of places such as Singapore, the Moroccan interior ministry even began requiring any young, male Westerner with long hair to attend the onsite barber before he would be allowed to clear immigration.

In addition, the hippies themselves were changing - they were getting older. A 24-year-old hippy in 1966, for instance, would have been a 38-year-old hippy by 1980. When the responsibilities of parenthood were factored-in, then the pressures to settle down, get a haircut and a steady job would have mounted. With the hippies themselves ageing and with changing social attitudes, even the hippie communes of California etc began to evolve into money-making entities with shops selling art and craftwork, retailing trinkets and hippie clothing and with cafes serving vegetarian and organic food etc. In some places such as Bali and Marrakech, some former hippies became successful hoteliers and even the possessors of considerable real estate porfolios. That said - in Goa today it's possible to find some 70-something hippies still practicing yoga on the beach, having arrived all those decades ago and never having left.

There would be a brief revival of the hippie trails in the 1990s which would be just that - brief and a revival. This would be mainly by the offspring of people who had not actually been hippies themselves in the 1960s. The children of the original itinerant, hippie parents are often known to have grown up gaining conservative outlooks and valuing rootedness of place.




(Before the hippies - the Indiaman bus service offered overland trips from London to Calcutta and Bombay in 1957)